I love scarves. I’m sure you’ve noticed, they show up more often in my oufits than not. I love how they’re flowy, how they add pattern and dimension to my wardrobe, and how they continue to assist me on finessing a personal style that has a touch of Golden Girls-chic.
However, it turns out that I have a bit of a scarf problem. Not in the buying, as I’m the queen of finding them at thrift stores and garage sales and pride myself on never having paid more than $1 for one. Nor in the wearing, as they regularly appear in my wardrobe as necklaces, headbands, bracelets and belts. It’s the storing that has bested me to the point that I finally had to admit I had a problem and find a solution.
Here’s where my scarves were living, on an accordion set of hooks in my closet:
Can’t see the hooks, can you? I had so many scarves piled atop one another that they would routinely fall off the hooks – the muffled thud coming from my closet in the middle of the night convincing me that “The Clothes Beast,” the name The Rocket Scientist gives to my sometimes unwieldy pile of laundry, had finally come to life and was out to punish me for never using fabric softener. This simply would not do.
So, as I learned from The Art of War, or possibly The Hills, it’s important to know your enemy. Here are my scarves laid out on my bed:
Can’t really see the bed, either, eh?
I realized that one of the big problems was that when all my scarves were hanging on the same hooks, the small ones got lost behind the larger ones, and the silk, polyester and satin ones of all sizes just kept slipping off. Hanging was not the solution for those scarves. Then I realized that I had a drawer in my dresser that was empty. I’m still not sure how that happened, but since nothing had been stored in there for over 6 months, it seemed fair game to try as a new scarf home. All the slippery and small scarves got rolled up and put into the drawer. Now, with little fiddling, I can see all those scarves at once.
And the long scarves went back onto the hooks, which now you can actually see!
The cool thing about this system (besides the fact that it exists at all) is that along with it being easier to see all my scarves and decide which one(s) to wear, I can also evaluation my collection as a whole. For example, all my long scarves are in cool colors: blue, green and purple. If I find another cute blue, green or purple scarf, chances are I already have one that fills the same niche. But if I find a red, yellow, or orange scarf…
Now, I’m famous for letting my organization techniques lapse, but I’m going to try to keep this one up – promise!
P.S. Doesn’t the one rolled red and blue scarf at the bottom of the photo look like the pattern is an angry face?
