A Closet Neat Freak--an Orderly Approach

Neat people can be intimidating--especially the ones who maintain order in places the rest of us can’t even see. To me, the visible world is complicated enough without having to worry about the disposition of our cabinets, drawers and closets. Isn’t that, in fact, why we invented cabinets, drawers and closets? So when Mom or other guests arrive unexpectedly, we can quickly stow our surplus goods?

Clearly, not everyone shares this view. A friend of mine’s closet is not merely neat, it looks like a Montessori classroom before the kids arrive. All the clothes are organized by type and color, with each item of clothing suspended from a color-coordinated hanger, and everything in proper rainbow order, according to the color spectrum.

Pancho Doll, who wrote this week’s cover piece on closet organization, also included an accompanying story--a first-person confession on being a neat freak. This revelation was no surprise to those of us who know him. The week before he started working here, he showed up in the parking lot with the entire contents of his life in the back seat of his car, all of it neatly packed in an assortment of milk crates and 16-ounce yogurt containers.

Doll is rather proud of his reputation for being neat--both in car and in closet. “After all, the closet is the most personal space in the home--with the possible exception of the bedside table and the medicine chest,” he said. Doll also seems to think that he might be on the cutting edge, at least the Ginzu-Knife edge, of popular culture.

“Closets have drawn a lot of attention in recent years,” he said. “A popular Japanese television show consisted of video closet muggings. Film crews approached people on the street and asked to follow them home and tape the contents of their closets.”

As a variation on this, Doll decided to survey some closets in Ventura County. It turned out to be a tougher assignment than you might think.

“I would call people and ask them if I could come by with a photographer. A couple of them asked, ‘What paper did you say you were from? Is this what the L. A. Times is doing now?’ ”

Nonetheless, Doll insists that the story has merit, and he has managed to find some sociologists and psychologists to agree with him. But he and the experts agree that closet behavior, like closets, can be disordered.

“According to the famous psychologist Seymour Adler, neatness is one thing, compulsiveness is another,” he said. “If your clothes arrive from the cleaner facing the wrong way on the hanger and you get so upset that you can’t go to work, that is generally considered compulsive.”