On coping with the closets-full elsewhere!
For too many years I have struggled with the problem of clothes. Not exactly clothes, but the need to keep them around for long periods of time. A man has essentially two season’s worth of clothes: Summer and Winter. This is a simple problem. The working closet is filled with the season’s clothes of the moment, and the other season’s worth are stored elsewhere, or, if he is lucky, he has a double closet all his own.
A woman, however, has four seasons-worth: Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, not counting transitional items picked up to cover unexpected mid-season weather changes or travel. Her working closet has the current season’s clothes, plus transitional items, which is fine. But now “elsewhere’ has three full season’s worth to store.
Given that each season of wear must conform generally to the same number of outfits, we then have so many outfits for high fashion (4), so many for semi-high-fashion (5), so many for informal (6), so many for everyday wear (8), so many for casual wear (8), and then the odd jeans, pullovers and shirts for serious work around the home (7). This totals up to 32 outfits or equivalent for each season. And, of course, 96 outfits have to be stored “elsewhere.”
Several other factors come into play. The higher the quality of the clothes, the longer they last, and the more likely that they are still in fashion (wearable when being seen, that is.). The half-life of a good suit or dress must be somewhere around 10 years (but if you keep it for 20 or so, it comes back into fashion and is again perfectly wearable!). This stabilizing factor is directly offset by the factor of newness or “not seen in it before,” which is very important indeed to women. They must have new clothes rather often. (Men, naturally, can wear the same old suits , blazers, slacks and shirts for many years without even thinking about it.)
The driving factor, however, is none of the above. The one thing that causes more clothes to be bought, and the older ones kept, is weight gain or loss. Women can go up two or three dress sizes in a month or two. They can come back down to their original sizes too, but going down seems to take at lot longer that a month or two.
The unhappy result is that one must have outfits for two or three sizes as well, at least enough to get by for several months of frantic dieting to take full effect. A fair estimate of the duplication due to size changes would be about 2.3, which results in 2.3 x 32 = 73.6 outfits in the ready closet, and 2.3 x 96 = 220.8 outfits in the “elsewhere” storage.
Now, I have done a measurement of how many outfits can fit on a foot of hanging rod space on the average, and that is 10 outfits of all types (except coats, which present yet another problem entirely). Thus, the working closet must have at least 7.36 feet of hanging rod. The “elsewhere” store must have over 22.08 feet of rod space.
Normal closets, you may realize, are on the order of 3.5 feet wide, and double closets obviously are 7 feet wide. This largely takes care of the working closet needs of women very nicely, if one ignores the 0.36 feet not available. Builders usually provide two such closets in the master bedroom, so the man has enough room for his clothes also. All of his clothes!
We now have the problem of where the woman’s “elsewhere” is in fact going to come from. Where will we find over 22 feet of rod space that is dependably bug proof, humidity proof, and dirt proof? This is three double closets in length. Well, there is the basement, the attic, and the garage left over, and perhaps one single closet in the spare bedroom that could be “partially” used.
The garage is out on account of oil and gas smells from the autos. The attic in most homes is accessed from a pull-down ladder, which is most inconvenient for clothes storage. We are left with the basement. (The other solution, getting rid of some of the items, is unacceptable, so you might as well forget that right now!)
For the moment, then, we have a 22-foot long set of zippered polyester bags on metal frames running down the middle of the basement. Plans are afoot to redo the basement real soon now (her words!) in order to have a truly decent and accessible place for “elsewhere!”
# posted by Mannning @ 11:37 PM
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