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| Help! My wardrobe is a complete state | |
| (about 20 hours later) | |
| My closet and cupboards are a total mess. Is there any way out of this nightmare? | My closet and cupboards are a total mess. Is there any way out of this nightmare? |
| Name withheld, by email | Name withheld, by email |
| I totally get that sci-fi has its appeal, but I’ve never understood why some writers and filmmakers look so far afield to scare their readers, when the most soul-gripping horror can always be found in domestic life. Certainly, nothing in films like The Fly, The Thing or Alien scares me as much as the prospect of opening the cupboard beneath the TV, AKA the place to put stuff that doesn’t really belong anywhere but maybe shouldn’t be thrown away because, well, who knows, perhaps one day etc. | I totally get that sci-fi has its appeal, but I’ve never understood why some writers and filmmakers look so far afield to scare their readers, when the most soul-gripping horror can always be found in domestic life. Certainly, nothing in films like The Fly, The Thing or Alien scares me as much as the prospect of opening the cupboard beneath the TV, AKA the place to put stuff that doesn’t really belong anywhere but maybe shouldn’t be thrown away because, well, who knows, perhaps one day etc. |
| Good Lord, who even knows what lurks in there any more – old phone chargers for phones that were discontinued five years ago? DVDs that came free with newspapers 20 years ago? Hairy trolls biding their time until I open the cupboard and they can throw all the plugs and DVDs in my face and reveal to the world that, beneath the (very) vague facade of tidiness suggested by the rest of my flat, lies a dark swamp of general chaos, and that this is a reflection of my own personal failings? I think we all know the answer there. | Good Lord, who even knows what lurks in there any more – old phone chargers for phones that were discontinued five years ago? DVDs that came free with newspapers 20 years ago? Hairy trolls biding their time until I open the cupboard and they can throw all the plugs and DVDs in my face and reveal to the world that, beneath the (very) vague facade of tidiness suggested by the rest of my flat, lies a dark swamp of general chaos, and that this is a reflection of my own personal failings? I think we all know the answer there. |
| But it is my wardrobe where true horror resides. Considering the amount of time, thought, care and, most of all, money I lavish on the cultivation of clothes, you’d think I’d take the kind of care of them that would make the curators of the Mona Lisa doff their chapeaux in awe. But this is all part of the Gordian knot of a problem: I love clothes and shoes, so I buy them. But my love for fashion is bigger than both my closet and my ability to wear all my clothes all the time, so certain things get lost in the dark back corners, buried beneath layers of other clothes, like fossils left to dessicate under other newer, flashier bones. Meanwhile other items are worn over and over, simply because they were worn most recently and are therefore at the top of the pile – I mean, top of my very carefully curated clothing system. Try coming up with a horror tragedy comparable to that, James Cameron. | But it is my wardrobe where true horror resides. Considering the amount of time, thought, care and, most of all, money I lavish on the cultivation of clothes, you’d think I’d take the kind of care of them that would make the curators of the Mona Lisa doff their chapeaux in awe. But this is all part of the Gordian knot of a problem: I love clothes and shoes, so I buy them. But my love for fashion is bigger than both my closet and my ability to wear all my clothes all the time, so certain things get lost in the dark back corners, buried beneath layers of other clothes, like fossils left to dessicate under other newer, flashier bones. Meanwhile other items are worn over and over, simply because they were worn most recently and are therefore at the top of the pile – I mean, top of my very carefully curated clothing system. Try coming up with a horror tragedy comparable to that, James Cameron. |
| I’ve probably spent more time reading articles about how to maintain the perfect wardrobe than I have actually cleaning out my wardrobe, which is perhaps the problem. I read these articles the way I read articles about how to have a dream holiday, and how to whip up a perfect al fresco summer lunch for 10 friends: not for any practical advice, but purely for fantasy (again, possibly part of the problem). My favourite at the moment are interviews with a woman called Marie Kondo, in which photos of people’s closets pre- and post-Kondo-fication are pretty much pornography to me. I am especially entranced by her tips on how to store clothes in drawers, particularly jeans, which involves rolling them and laying them on their side, thus allowing you to see everything you own, as opposed to simply piling them on top of each other and never seeing certain garments again. | I’ve probably spent more time reading articles about how to maintain the perfect wardrobe than I have actually cleaning out my wardrobe, which is perhaps the problem. I read these articles the way I read articles about how to have a dream holiday, and how to whip up a perfect al fresco summer lunch for 10 friends: not for any practical advice, but purely for fantasy (again, possibly part of the problem). My favourite at the moment are interviews with a woman called Marie Kondo, in which photos of people’s closets pre- and post-Kondo-fication are pretty much pornography to me. I am especially entranced by her tips on how to store clothes in drawers, particularly jeans, which involves rolling them and laying them on their side, thus allowing you to see everything you own, as opposed to simply piling them on top of each other and never seeing certain garments again. |
| Like I say, this entrances me. Does it make me do anything about my own drawers? No, it does not. The gap between me knowing what I could do about my closet, even should do about my closet, and actually doing it is about as wide as me knowing I should not eat sweets at 10am and me caring enough to stop doing it. | Like I say, this entrances me. Does it make me do anything about my own drawers? No, it does not. The gap between me knowing what I could do about my closet, even should do about my closet, and actually doing it is about as wide as me knowing I should not eat sweets at 10am and me caring enough to stop doing it. |
| In the brilliant Melissa Bank’s bafflingly underrated second novel, The Wonder Spot (easily one of my favourite novels of all time), the protagonist, Sophie Applebaum, shares her college room with the endearingly pretentious Venice Lambourne, who is everything Sophie is not: glamorous, spoilt, self-confident, self-obsessed and, ultimately, weak. An early indication of Venice’s character comes when she first arrives at college with hardly any clothes: “She believed in owning only perfect things, or, as she said, ‘one perfect thing’.” | In the brilliant Melissa Bank’s bafflingly underrated second novel, The Wonder Spot (easily one of my favourite novels of all time), the protagonist, Sophie Applebaum, shares her college room with the endearingly pretentious Venice Lambourne, who is everything Sophie is not: glamorous, spoilt, self-confident, self-obsessed and, ultimately, weak. An early indication of Venice’s character comes when she first arrives at college with hardly any clothes: “She believed in owning only perfect things, or, as she said, ‘one perfect thing’.” |
| This is another common theory touted by tidy wardrobe evangelists: only buy things you really love and you will have the perfect capsule wardrobe. You often find this one promoted by the sort of folk fashion magazines are so fond of interviewing: French jewellery designers, Italian lingerie designers, Japanese interior decorators, etc. But, like most theories advocated by fashion magazines, it fails to take into account a fairly basic issue: human nature. Maybe you’re the kind of person who buys two perfectly cut, expensive T-shirts instead of several delightful if ridiculous, cheap dresses, but, if so, you’re possibly a robot so you might want to get that checked out. | This is another common theory touted by tidy wardrobe evangelists: only buy things you really love and you will have the perfect capsule wardrobe. You often find this one promoted by the sort of folk fashion magazines are so fond of interviewing: French jewellery designers, Italian lingerie designers, Japanese interior decorators, etc. But, like most theories advocated by fashion magazines, it fails to take into account a fairly basic issue: human nature. Maybe you’re the kind of person who buys two perfectly cut, expensive T-shirts instead of several delightful if ridiculous, cheap dresses, but, if so, you’re possibly a robot so you might want to get that checked out. |
| For further proof of The Wonder Spot’s brilliance, Venice later convinces Sophie to buy a $400 dress she can’t afford, insisting it is The Perfect Dress. Sophie ends up hating it and wears it only three times, proving that perfection rarely has a place in real life. (Seriously, go read this book now. If I had the power, I’d put it on the national curriculum alongside Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Prep.) | For further proof of The Wonder Spot’s brilliance, Venice later convinces Sophie to buy a $400 dress she can’t afford, insisting it is The Perfect Dress. Sophie ends up hating it and wears it only three times, proving that perfection rarely has a place in real life. (Seriously, go read this book now. If I had the power, I’d put it on the national curriculum alongside Curtis Sittenfeld’s novel Prep.) |
| So here’s my rule on wardrobe maintenance: know thyself. And if thyself is not the kind of person to roll up jeans and buy only one perfect thing, accept this and instead set aside one day every six months to clean out your wardrobe, remind yourself of what you do own, take stuff you don’t like to the charity shop, shove the rest back in and get on with your life. This really is the only way to keep the nightmare manageable. Then, you can curl up and re-read, for the 17th time, your favourite novel. | So here’s my rule on wardrobe maintenance: know thyself. And if thyself is not the kind of person to roll up jeans and buy only one perfect thing, accept this and instead set aside one day every six months to clean out your wardrobe, remind yourself of what you do own, take stuff you don’t like to the charity shop, shove the rest back in and get on with your life. This really is the only way to keep the nightmare manageable. Then, you can curl up and re-read, for the 17th time, your favourite novel. |
| Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com. | Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com. |