NO PLACE LIKE HOME

karen wight

If you don’t have a fabulous ski vacation or tropical destination planned

for the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, take some time to get

organized before the start of a New Year -- THE New Year.

Time for fresh starts, organized closets and labeled storage boxes.

Contain your chaos. Make it easy to find those holiday decorations next

year.

Buy some red and green boxes or clear plastic containers to store your

treasures. A hardware or container store is a great source for everything

you would ever need to get organized.

Make a list before you go so you don’t forget anything. If you’re storing

decorations in cardboard boxes, label, label, label. You may think that

you are going to remember what things you put in those boxes, but you

won’t. By the time another year goes by and you have absorbed another

year’s worth of mental madness, you will hardly remember where you put

the boxes, much less what you put in them.

If you have the space, devote one large closet to storing holiday items.

Designate one area in the closet for each holiday you have decorations

for. Christmas and Halloween seem to be the big winners in our house. I’m

not especially fond of Halloween as a holiday, but over the years the

kids have conned me into buying quite a few permanent pumpkins, spider

webs and a rather large skeleton that we hang on the front door. We have

a few Thanksgiving items, more than a few Easter bunnies, a rather

sizable amount of luau paraphernalia (a teenager thing) and, of course,

more than a lion’s share of Christmas.

And now for the really hard part, before you put things into storage:

edit, edit, edit. Take a good look at what you have. If you have broken

ornaments, fix them or throw them out. If you have not used certain items

in several seasons, unless precious or sentimental, out they go. If you

have older kids who are starting traditions of their own or want a few of

your goodies (or their old goodies) to hang on their tree, hand them

over. Sifting through the closets and boxes is tough, but hanging on to

things that you do not use is poor use of storage. Time to move on. Put

them into your garage sale pile -- remember, “one man’s silver is another

man’s gold.”

In addition to labeling your boxes, take a little time to put a label on

the shelf. If you have ever had your spouse or kids tell you they

couldn’t find something, now is your chance to make sure this never

happens again. Encourage that independence by making this foolproof (no

disrespect intended).

While we’re in the closets, sort through those clothes. If they don’t

fit, out they go. If you haven’t worn it in a year, out it goes. Still

having trouble giving things up? Put it in the dress-up closet for the

kids to play with. And here’s a big clue: if your kids don’t think that

it even rates the obscurity of the dress-up closet, it definitely goes

into the garage sale pile.

Another closet opportunity that the family can take advantage of is a

book closet. Over the years we have accumulated hundreds of paperback

books that have become tattered and torn and just don’t look too classy

on the bookshelves. I try to classify them by subject and reader level:

Dr. Seuss; sports; Babysitters Club; science; holiday; you get the idea.

This makes finding the books a breeze but the closet often looks like the

returned book pile at the library. But if that’s the price of literacy, I

can live with that. (Organizing this closet is also one of the best ways

for the kids to earn a little extra mad money).

One more closet to explore: the linen closet. The only tattered towels

you are allowed to keep are those for washing the car, and those towels

belong in the garage. Sort linens by room or bed size. Stack towels by

color or bathroom. Make things easy to find, easier to put away. If you

have the space, hang all of your tablecloths. They are much easier to see

and usually don’t have to be re-ironed for special occasions.

By now you’re wondering what all of MY closets look like. Well, the truth

is they could be better. I give them a B+. Someday, when the kids are

older, I’ll really get organized. Someday, I’ll be able to really clean

their closets and know they will remain tidy for more than a few days.

Someday I’ll give the closets the “A” treatment.

* KAREN WIGHT is a Newport Beach resident who owned Wight House Design

for 10 years. Her column runs Saturdays.