Closets

My bedroom when was growing up didn’t have a closet – not until my father built one when I was about ten years old. Everything I had fit nicely in my small white dresser. Actually, I don’t recall actually using that closet for my stuff, but my mother had it filled with dresses and shoes. My father built a closet in their bedroom, but he had his clothes in that one. My grandparents, who had the back bedroom had a metal cabinet where they hung all their clothes. Now that I think about it, that cabinet was awfully small…still they managed to be well-dressed. My grandmother kept her hats in boxes on top of the closet.

In that old house there was also a very large walk-in closet off the kitchen. It was a strange and mysterious place filled with out-of-season clothes, sheets and towels, the vacuum cleaners, and an assortment of things they had no other place for. Once a year they cleaned it out and it was a big deal.

The house also had a big walk-in pantry off the kitchen. They kept china and food in the pantry. One day I was outside and heard a large crash. A shelf in the pantry had collapsed and all of my grandmother’s fine china was broken. All I have left of it today are a few serving pieces that managed to escape.

When we moved to our new house, there was a closet in each bedroom and even two linen closets in the hallway. The closets were small by today’s standards, but luxurious by 1958 standards. There was no pantry, so my mother had one of the kitchen cabinets converted to a make-shift pantry – great for food and broom, however. She kept an overflow pantry in the basement consisting of metal shelves in the garage. She couldn’t resist a sale on canned goods, so we always had plenty of food on hand just in case of World War III. There were two closets in the entrance hall. She kept things like table leaves and baskets in one, along with tablecloths. In the other one, they had winter coats and all my father’s suit jackets. The basement had a huge closet under the stairs, but as time went on, the basement itself became more and more like a giant closet.

It’s funny, but I can’t remember much about the closets in my college dormitory, but I know we had them. What I do recall is that each summer we had to take all of our stuff home. I had a clothes bar that stretched across the back seat of the car – once I had a car on campus which wasn’t until my sophomore year. You could always spot the college students on the highways by their clothes rails.

When we first go married I had to share a clothes closet with my husband. That immediately proved problematic. Our first house, in San Bernardino, had two closets in the master bedroom, one of the house’s nicest features. It was luxurious! Still I overflowed my clothes into the guest room closet and had to do the seasonal closet swap.

But when we moved to Maryland in 1976, we bought a house with only one closet in the master bedroom. That was not a wise move. I gave that closet to my husband and for many years kept all my clothes in the guest room closet across the hall. Plus there was a large cedar-lined closet in the basement and I used that for my off-season clothes. It worked, but the seasonal trek up and down the stairs wasn’t fun. Finally, in 1989, I had had enough and we built another closet in the corner of the master bedroom and a huge pantry and two more closets. Life started looking up!

When we built our house in 1992, we knew we wanted LOTS of closets. We designed big walk-in closets for ourselves in an area off the master bedroom. Both have lots of built in shelving and mine even has a window. Recently I installed a small water cooler so I don’t have to go downstairs to get filtered water. Finally, I don’t have to do the seasonal clothes swap anymore. The result, however, is that clothes tend to accumulate unworn in the closet. Once a year I have to go through and get rid of things, otherwise that closet would totally max out and start overflowing to other rooms.

We put big standard type lighted closets in all the bedrooms and have three linen closets, plus a big walk-in pantry, a large entrance hall closet, office closets, and more. And, of course, we have managed to fill all of them.

The closets in my office are especially deep. They are designed to hold filing cabinets, and they do quite nicely. My office, on the main floor of the house, is designed for easy conversion to a bedroom if either of us should be incapacitated and unable to climb stairs. The filing closets quickly convert to clothes closets and the hallway closet, which now has shelving and a spare refrigerator, can be converted to hold a washer and dryer.

I guess with closets, you can never have enough. But in our house, we have sure tried to have to maximum we can. I love closets – they keep things handy, but out of sight. One of the hardships of being an early settler in the US was that most people didn’t have closets. I guess they didn’t have that many clothes and closets were taxed – so why bother! Oh, how the world has changed. Today there are whole stores devoted to closet systems.