Most of us are not lucky enough to have walk-in closets or even have enough closet space in our homes. That means we must be extra clever in our use of these spaces–making the most of what we’ve got.

Whether it’s as simple as adding more organization to your closets or totally overhauling and utilizing a closet in new and unexpected ways, it can be a challenge. It’s very likely that your closets, rather than being functional and useful, seem more like creatures that threaten to engulf you every time you open the door! That’s why we’ve compiled this round-up of some of the best clever closet ideas we’ve seen. Use these ideas as inspiration to transform your eyesore closets, quit shutting the door on that problem and reclaim your closet spaces!

 Organizational Tips to Transform Your Closets

• Baskets – add shelves and baskets to deal with the clutter. Catch all baskets can help you control all those little odd and ends that need to be stored away, but don’t quite fit in a drawer.
• Peg Board – adding peg board to backs of closet doors can instantaneously add more usable space to every closet. Use it to store wintertime accessories, like gloves and scarves, or for tool storage, like scissors and pruning shears.
• Towel Bar – the same idea can be applied, but by adding towel bars to the back of closet doors. Hang scarves, necklaces, purses or even spools of ribbon from these. Don’t be afraid to get creative with your solutions.
• Rolling Carts – use rolling carts to take advantage of the floor space in closets, but add the functionality of being able to roll the cart out of the closet for easy access to your stored goods.

Inspirational Closet Transformations:

Whether you have a need for the space or just want to transform under-utilized closets, here are some great inspirational closet transformations.

1. Turn a linen closet into a well-stocked home bar.
2. Transform a closet into a much needed home office.
3. Take the doors off and add more entryway space to your home.
4. Turn a closet into an amazing crafting space.
5. Take a large closet and make it into a hideaway nook.
6. Create a cozy work space and comfy hangout space all in one.
7. What every home needs is a cozy book nook!
8. Turn a boring closet into a fun play space for the kids.
9. Add curtains for a dramatic stage.

 Top Image: Pottery Barn

Related on Ecosalon

Spring Cleaning your Closet: 6 Steps to Less Clutter and More Fabulous Clothes

How to Declutter: 7 Storage Solutions That Are Like Kryptonite to Clutter!

9 Functional Home Office Ideas for Small Spaces

The post Rescue Your Closets With These Clever Closet Transformations appeared first on EcoSalon.

EcoSalon has praised the benefits of buying less this holiday season. At the same time, why not clean out your closets and give up what you don’t use so that someone who needs clothing and toys can benefit?

Modern Mom did a post on what they called Project Giveaway – which is an ideal way to describe what is going on in my own home as I rummage through closets, bagging what doesn’t fit and what we don’t wear. I must do it while my kids are at school because they are creatures of habit who cling to old items for nostalgia’s sake. They have put up a big fuss any time we have joined neighborhood yard sales and it has taken much cajoling to convince them to part with what they don’t use. They are generous kids with great core values but my 10-year-old likes to insist, “I’m saving that for my children!”

Follow my lead and spend a few hours this week allowing retired items to come out of the closet. An indicator you have too much?

“Drawers are usually overfilled and it is hard to find what you actually own,” I’m told by professional San Francisco organizer, Molly Coomber, who helps people get a jump start on what can be a daunting task.

For some, it’s a question of what to give away and how. I’m pretty ruthless about that, dispensing rather easily with what I think someone else could use. For those who struggle more, women like Beth Berliner of Revamp offer closet makeovers. Berliner’s service basically overhauls the contents of home closets helping busy people make the best use of what they do own.

“It’s the idea of being green and recycling and utilizing clothes that are part of your wardrobe in a different way,” Berliner explains. “I think you should get rid of what hasn’t been worn in years and what is not flattering to your body, which obviously changes over years.”

Berliner finds once you have cleared out ill fitting and outdated blouses, shoes and jeans, you are left with what really works for you.

“You end up with more because you can see what you have and you can pull more when getting dressed and save time weeding through your closet,” she says. “Taking stock of what is in there sets up a working wardrobe.”

I love the afterglow of weeding out, and I think an edited closet and toy shelves allow my children to be reintroduced to items they forgot that they owned.

In terms of what to take out, you can separate out garments  that are too small and have no sentimental value. Obviously, you aren’t going to toss out that first birthday dress or first copy of Good Night Moon, but if it has no sentimental value, kiss it goodbye.

I first donate to friends who can use the hand-me-downs and give away the bulk to various charities in my city, including the ARC, which offers  a household recycling pick up of clothing, furniture, toys and books and other household items you wish to donate. Many similar organizations abound nationwide, and are eager to collect during the holiday period. Warm weather clothing, especially,  is so appreciated this time of year.

You can also consign your clothing at many boutiques, such as Designer Consigner and the Junior League’s  Next-to-New Shop in San Francisco. Some of them pay as much as 50% on items sold and donate what doesn’t sell. Some also give percentages of their proceeds to good causes such as cancer research.

Be sure to ask for a receipt for the tax benefit of giving non-monetary items in 2009. Hey, it is just one more incentive for playing Project Giveaway. The biggest incentive for me is that cleaning out means less to contend with, and it feels so good.

Main Image: Liz Marie

The post Out of the Closet (And into a New Home) appeared first on EcoSalon.

I’m always tempted by those clever hooks for purses to keep better track of our keys. They’re usually hidden in my bag under a bushel of important papers, hair ties, various wallets and glasses. Digging for keys is adding years to my life. It’s that stressful because disorder complicates my life.

There are people out there called professional organizers who charge hourly rates to box and label the accumulation in our homes. And everywhere you look, there are attractive storage boxes and baskets for sale to keep things in their proper places in our offices and homes. What I wouldn’t do to keep my family’s things in their proper places. I would glue them down if that worked.

The middle class is begging for these gadgets and services. We are not only being buried alive by constant connection and information, our accumulation, too, is taking over and greatly complicating our lives.

It doesn’t matter that I’m attempting to go paperless by saying no to receipts at the register or reading my news and paying  bills online. It doesn’t matter that I spent last weekend eliminating clothes from my daughters’ closets and retiring enough garments to fill five supersize garbage compactor bags. Today, my husband is hauling them to his mother’s so that her nurse can ship the items to her poor family in the Philippines.

As I strive to reduce excess and clutter to make my home the simplified, functional haven I envision, I continue to do battle with the nagging phenomenon of  losing shit. Shit! I’m sick of it.

“Where’s the English paper I printed out?”

“Who moved my tax documents? They were on kitchen table!”

“Have you seen my new skinny jeans? I’ve looked in the hampers and in everyone’s rooms and I can’t find them.”

Yes, playing the surprisingly unrewarding game of lost and found remains the most aggravating symptom of the consumption syndrome known as affluenza, aptly defined by Wikipedia as “the portmanteau of the words affluence and influenza and a socially transmitted condition of overload resulting form the dogged pursuit of more. ”

First, allow me to point out that the mother is the sole proprietor of the house capable of locating lost articles. And once the lost treasure surfaces, I rarely see the results I would expect, i.e. a big hug and overwhelming expression of joy on their faces. “Goodness, Mother, how can I ever thank you?”

Take my husband, an intelligent eco man who acquires the least, loses the most, and can’t find objects that are literally under his nose. One daughter has inherited this same bizarre gene. The other daughter was once a registered bloodhound like her mama, but is now losing her shit, and has succumbed to the same bad habits as her influential sister such as getting undressed and leaving belongings strewn on the floor of various rooms. (They also both bite their fingers and devour chocolate like wild beasts, habits I link to the bizarre genes inherited from their mother.)

Every so often, like last weekend, I get on a roll and rifle through closets, sort my kitchen desk nook, organize the kids’ bins of art supplies, and perform the most dreaded and vapid chore of all – filing. Man oh man, does anyone loathe filing as much as I do?

I wish I could get that organizer lady back here to help me make new files and sort all the junk. She made professional labels on her label maker. She was great. I wanted to marry her. I want her to move in and take over and take me away. She’s Calgon to me, minus the harsh chemicals. But wouldn’t you know it, I don’t know where I put her number.

I try not to beat myself up about all of this – to follow the advice of modern clergy and therapists and be compassionate with myself. Sure, I’m a bonehead about keeping order, a little better than some of my most eccentric working friends, and not half as good as most stay-at-home moms.

It’s really a matter of overcoming the selfishness which leads to the over-consumption of material possessions, according to the author of the website My Super- Charged Life. As he sees it, the disease of deriving happiness from the next new toy “is a fruitless pursuit that will quickly leave a person depressed, disillusioned and broke.”

I feel depressed when I drop my girls off at their private school and pass the lost and found corner which is so generously stocked, it resembles a second hand store. Piles of forgotten lunch boxes with rotting contents, abandoned warm winter jackets, essential classroom binders and adorable stylish tee shirts: They all abound in the unsightly lost and found – glaring symbols of affluenza.

At the end of each month, a volunteer parent named Tila from Colombia ships the unclaimed items to the poor in her homeland. The children there are appreciative. Children who barely have enough food to eat don’t snub their cheese sandwiches and abandon lunch boxes on the black top. When you own just one winter jacket, you don’t leave it behind when you board the bus for home.

True, kids will always be forgetful. I was once a forgetful child. But unlike my daughters, I had less and kept track of it. My walk-in-closet contained about five pair of shoes and two toy boxes, one with Barbies, one with stuffed animals. It was easy to clean up after play. It was freeing.

Guess it all adds up to wanting to be free, again, free from the clutter and feeling that fleeting high from getting something new, a wired emotion we don’t feel by accident.

In the ’30s, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays (known as the father of public relations) figured out how to mold public opinion via third party propaganda campaigns for selling everything from bacon and eggs promoted by the nation’s doctors to cigarettes, soap and books. This marketing strategy dictated to the receptive nation eventually became a familiar meme: Linking the accumulation of goods with feelings of happiness and success.

Ironically, I’m now finding happiness is attainable not by adding but subtracting. If anything should get lost, it is the brainwashing (and sometimes greenwashing) that the more we amass, the better we feel.

I strive to find the simplicity of less. Even more than ignorance, I suspect it is the route to bliss. In other words, it is time to bench Team Edward.

This is the latest installment in Luanne’s column, Life in the Green Lane.

Main Image: Evelyn is Here

Images: Jeffrey Beall, It’s a Purse Thing, Squidoo, Wikipedia

The post Lost and Found in the Age of Affluenza appeared first on EcoSalon.