Closet

CONTINUES FROM PAGE F2 fit there at big box retailers such as Walmart, Amazon and the Container Store. Schmidt prefers bins that are climate-controlled, with “lids to protect from dust and moths.” Take stock of high-up shelves in your home and secondary closets (such as in a guest room, hallway or office) that may be underused. Those spots could be perfect for storing bulky, cold-weather items in warm months, says Schmidt. If you hang up winter sweaters, Coleman suggests using padded hangers that won’t stretch their shoulders.

4. Hang up shoes

When kept on the floor, shoes can spread around a closet like a plague, consuming premium space. One of the easiest solutions: Hang them up. Most types of shoes will fit in a hanging organizer. Easy to find and very affordable, they can fit behind most standard-sized

Notes

CONTINUED FROM PAGE F3 diagrams, conceptual sketches and schematic drawings.

Each class will involve instruction and evaluation of projects in progress.

Group discussions and exercises will put theory into action.

Students will make a formal presentation at the final class with the primary goal of conveying a coherent design narrative and process leading to proposed solutions.

Cost $400 members, $450 non-members.

Berkshire Botanical Garden can help with financial aid.

For more information, or to register, visit www. berkshirebotanical.org closet doors. Boots are trickier, but if you have free space on your closet rod, Hord suggests hanging them up, too, using hanging shapers.

Berkshire Botanical Garden is located at 5 West Stockbridge Road.

For boots that have to stay on the floor, Coleman recommends regular shapers, sometimes made of Styrofoam or plastic. They ensure your favorite pair will maintain their integrity and keep from flopping over (and taking up even more space). Schmidt also suggests taking advantage of the unused space under your bed once again, storing boots and shoes in skinny bins designed specifically for them.

5. Maximize closet rods

If you have lots of clothes and limited hanging space, invest in slim hangers that allow you to fit more onto rods. From there, Hord suggests “organizing tops by sleeve length, and then color within sleeve length.” That way, your clothes are situated in what she calls “silhouette order” and your silk tank top won’t get lost

AMHERST Virtual garden tour Feb. 2

• “Artists’ Gardens in New England”: Join the Jones Library and escape winter weather with a virtual garden tour on Thursday, Feb. 2, at 7 p.m., presented by Jana Milbocker. Register directly via Zoom at : https://us02web. zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_4jIO8aCiRjibt - vZ2sKeHuQ . among your button-downs. She also suggests using rod dividers that you can label yourself.

• “Gardens and Gardening”: Visit the private havens of Edith Wharton, Julian Alden Weir, Childe Hassam, Daniel Chester French, Emily Dickinson, Augustus SaintGaudens, Celia Thaxter and others in the first session in a planned series.

The program is free and open to the public. For more information, contact Janet Ryan at 413-259-3223.

Coleman says any closet can benefit from cedar or lavender hanging blocks. Hang them among your clothes to keep everything fresh and to repel moths.

6. Treat drawers like filing cabinets

We all know this story: You sleep through your alarm and rip through your drawers in a desperate search for that shirt. To avoid this scenario, every organizer we spoke to offered two words: file folding. This method, made famous by the messiah of organization, Marie Kondo, is very easy and comes with multiple benefits - not only does it make each item of clothing easier to see, it allows you to fit more items into the drawer. Instead of folding your clothes and stacking them like sheets of printer paper on top of each other, fold them in half once more and stack them side-byside like files in a filing cabinet (hence the name). You can do this with jeans just as easily as T-shirts. Schmidt also suggests using spring-loaded drawer dividers to separate items (such as shorts, T-shirts and socks). They provide the effect of customized drawers for much less money.

7.

Corral handbags

Sort of like shoes, handbags tend to sprawl out in the absence of an organizing strategy - and there are several to try. Hord suggests hanging them up with hangers designed to maintain the shape of leather handles. You can also take advantage of the nesting tactic and store smaller bags inside larger ones, or group formal clutches and wallet-sized bags inside acrylic holders. Schmidt suggests putting out-of-season bags on the top shelf of your closet in bins or boxes and “attaching a Polaroid photo of the bag on the front so you know exactly which bags are stored.”