Musing about closets and their contents

We’re in the process (around the halfway point in the build part) of building a new home. The architect made some interesting choices along the way that I didn’t fully anticipate would be a problem. To be fair, neither did anyone else. I’m not blaming him. The issues tend to involve the need to locate functional equipment. R. decided he wanted Absolutely No Fossil Fuels, which we didn’t quite attain, because there’s a backup generator if the batteries are inadequate to a sustained winter outage. However, we got pretty close by using ground loop heat pumps. There’s just a lot of HVAC equipment that needs to be in ceilings or walls or floors or closets.

It’s all working out okay — altho I’m still frosty about the loss of the laundry room — and then there was the whole issue with who was going to do the millwork in closets and closet type areas. I hit a point where I just couldn’t seem to get any of the things I wanted (or avoid the things I didn’t want) in the millwork when working with the architect, so I removed that dependency from the build and we went with a different vendor. In the process of doing that, I removed the master bedroom “walk through” closet from the scope of the build; I’m going to kit that out after we’ve been there for a few months or whatever, since we have an overlapping year.

My first plan is Lundia, because it’s all wood, very simple. I figured that was within our capabilities to figure out. Then I ran across Rev-A-Shelf’s new Edge system (so new, it’s not fully available yet), and now I’m not sure what I’m going to do. But I’m also in the process of going through every last thing in my current house (not all at once!) and deciding whether I want to move it to the new house. If I don’t, I’m listing it on FB and getting rid of it now. This has led to some really interesting and enlightening conversations. It has also led to a lot of personal realizations.

There’s about a quarter of the hanging space in my closet that is seasonal/special occasion/wtf. That’s where Christmas themed stuff lives, and my wedding dress, and a very expensive handbag that I never actually use. There are also a number of dresses over there, and I’ve been methodically going through the dresses and things in that lightly / never used section of the closet to figure out what I really never would use again. Last night, a couple renfaire type maxi dresses went into the bag, but a different renfaire type maxi dress turned out to fit great, so I’m gonna wear that for Halloween with a purple witch’s hat. This morning, I pulled out two pairs of weather resistant technical pants that I never wear and tried them on. I figured neither would fit and I’d get rid of both, but actually, one pair fits fine. So I got rid of the ones that didn’t fit and gained a pair of pants that I might actually use since I now realize they fit great (over clothes, which is critical in water resistant pants).

This kind of thing has taken my closet over the last few months from kinda tightly packed to visibly having a bunch of space. I didn’t have a goal, but I’m thinking about having a goal. I’m thinking about figuring out an amount of hanging space that feels easy to keep track of everything in it, and pruning / curating down to that and then staying within that space, even tho it is less than the space I currently have, and then designing the new closet to have that amount of space.

But this is a new idea, so I’m going to contemplate it for a while first.