Closet Drama

We’ve all had them. Bad closet days. You’re late for the Gibralsky meeting and you can’t find your left navy pump. You pull out a wire hanger to find that it has mated with its neighbor and spawned a wiry nest of tangled offspring. That evening you come home exhausted, hoist a load of dry-cleaning onto the bowing closet rod and the whole pole and shelf collapse.

Enough days like this and you reach the end of your closet pole. You hunt for one of those ads that feature neatly cubed and cubbied closets, sectioned, streamlined, basketed, binned.

Neil Balter, who founded the closet organizing industry with the launch of California Closets in 1978, says people decide to come to terms with their closets when they don’t want to spend one more unnecessary minute digging through the shoe graveyard. Capitalizing on this compulsion are numerous closet and container companies that are enjoying, according to experts, a growth of 15% to 20% a year.

Budding neatniks can spend less than $100 to more than $700 to outfit a basic 8-foot wall closet--more for walk-ins. Price depends not so much on function but on form and who installs it. All systems, whether made of coated wire or laminated particle board, do the same job when installed properly. But coated wire systems received a slightly lower overall score in a recent Consumer Reports article than their particle board counterparts. Although coated wire shelving proved lighter and less expensive, it lost points in strength and versatility.

Do-it-yourselfers can get a basic coated wire kit from Home Depot for $30, then add accessories including racks for ties, belts, scarves and shoes, jewelry trays and wire drawers, and be in for under $100.

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For those who would rather pay a professional installer than a chiropractor and who prefer the look of laminated particle board, San Francisco-based California Closets or L.A.-based Closet Factory--companies that earned the highest ratings in Consumer Reports--may be the companies of choice. Both are national chains with four Southland locations each. Local players offering similar products include fast-growing Closet World and Closets By Design, which even competitors say has an outstanding reputation.

Capturing the middle market is newcomer Organizers Direct, which Balter started after he sold California Closets to Williams-Sonoma. Organizers Direct, which has seven dealers here, offers a slightly thinner grade of laminated particle board and cuts a couple other corners discernible only to the trained eye.

Based in Phoenix, Organizers Direct blossomed out of an observation Balter had while at California Closets. Of all the people who called for closet estimates, only about half actually bought, he said. “They all loved the product, but not the price. So I figured out a way to give them 90% of the product for less than half the price.” Or about $300 for an 8-foot closet.

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Although most customers do only master bedroom closets, the next most popular areas to organize are second bedrooms, including kids’ closets, followed by the pantry, laundry and utility rooms. Following in favor is the home office--a growing area--and for the truly compulsive, the garage.

Regardless of whether you go for the Mercedes or the Hyundai of closet organizers, the steps are the same: clean, choose, create.

To help with the first painful step, Balter provides customers with an acid test. He tells them to donate it, toss it or box it in the attic if a garment falls into any of these categories: out of style, too small, a notch down in quality from what you currently wear, you haven’t worn it in the last year, it needs mending or altering.

Next, inventory what you’re keeping, then let your possessions dictate your closet configuration. A professional installer can do this for you. If you want to do it yourself, first assess how much long hang you have. Once you figure out how much space to devote to a single rod with items longer than 42 inches, you can break the rest of the closet into double hang and shelf towers. Figure like the pros that 1 foot of closet pole holds six suits, 12 shirts, eight dresses or six pants. (Plastic hangers, of course.)

“Life is so hectic and busy,” Balter said, “people find organization gives them a sense of calm. If you can get one area of your life under control, it’s a little victory.”