Mel

The people who posted their disbelief in this simple and very valid question…I assume they all have exactly the number of hangers that they have clothing. If one of the hangers breaks they are pretty much screwed and have to run to a store and buy another. That is not cost effective and is a time waster to have to make a spare trip to the store everytime you break a hanger.

When I shop at some outlet stores, I ask them for extra hangers. Liz Clairborne (moving stores) once gave me two boxes of nice plastic hangers. I used them to change all the hangers in my closet to be the same, which looks great. The spares I keep on a clothing line in the third spare shower, which I use to hang dry clothing. The hang dry clothes and the extra hangers hang out there.

For my coat closet, when I have a major party I clear out all the coats, and leave nice empty wooden hangers awaiting my guest coats. Am I going to leave 40 extra heavy wooden hangers hanging there 365 days a year? Um no…so I appreciate the few suggestions that have been placed about this topic. I like the idea of the hanger holder, and the wall mounted holder, and the rod over the dryer.

Thanks to everyone who shared their useful tips, and boo to everyone who couldn’t think past their own lifestyles to share anything other than criticism.

I am a renter and although there is enough space for a washer in my very very tiny (less than 4 square foot) bathroom, I dont own a dryer and there is also no space for hanging the laundry out to dry. there is also no public laundromat in my city, since this is uncommon in my country.
So, if I want to dry my clothes, I have to do this either in my living room or the bedroom. I own a foldable drying rack, which stays behind the door while not in use. I never hang any t-shirts (the type of clothing that I wear most)on this rack simply because there is not enough space on laundry day. so all T-Shirts go on extra hangers an then on the sides of the rack for drying (not sure if you can imagine that, but its the way it works for me). When they are dry, I fold them and put them back into the closet. This is so small, that there is also not enough space on the rod to hang all T-Shirts (need the space for skirts, dresses etc).
So, after laundry day, I need to store about 10-15 hangers. And the laundry basket bears the same problem as does the bag in which I store the hangers at the moment: they get caught and it looks messy.

I hope I could clarify the problem a bit & maybe there will come a time in which I have all the space I need tho put up the hangers on a rod. Until then, I really need a solution to store extra hangers on the bottom of my closet. So as well as I understand that for most of you this seems to be an unnecessary question, for me its an interesting one.

Right now we use a cubby in the closet for one shape of empty hanger, plastic bins (aka a wastebasket, though never used for trash) for the others.

I’m also a little baffled by the folks who manage to keep exactly as many hangers as they have hanging clothes. We have a fair bit of wardrobe turnover, even for the adults in our family — get “new” clothes at a tag sale or clothing swap, clear our closets of things we’re not wearing — so the numbers fluctuate quite a bit. It helps to have a place to stick extra hangers!

There are two possibilities to avoiding traipsing back and forth from the laundry area to the closet to grab these hangers: 1) carry all the hangers to the laundry area with you, or 2) bring the clothes back to the closet, and put the clothes on the hangers that are already there.

As to (1), an easy way to do this is to slip a rope into the corner of the hangers, and carry the hangers together. A rope takes up little room and is the ultimate multi-tasker.

The one thing I will say, though, is that I do my wash in a communal laundry room in the apartment building. And when I had a washer and dryer, it was in a single-floor apartment. My parents (whose laundry is washed in the basement and put away two floors up) may well have a different take on this. Except… No, not really. Everything goes into baskets, and gets put on hangers upstairs. That’s where the ironing board is.

So yeah, imagination failure here.

The goal of this blog and community is for us all to get a better handle on being organized and clutter free. Congratulations to those of you who are already there, but help, don’t condemn, those of us who are still struggling.