$450 per hour to organize your closet.  Perhaps V would like to start a consultancy with me?



June 1, 2006
Into the Closet

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM
BESIDES its racks of Chanel suits and shelves of shoes by Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin, Rose Caiola's closet, on the 22nd floor of an Upper East Side high-rise, has views of the East River and the Triborough Bridge. It also has a plush window seat, a telephone, temperature controls and a meditation area with Tibetan bells, Buddha statues and a cream-colored candle.

But one of the best things about the closet, as far as she is concerned, is something more mundane. Standing in the meditation area one morning last month and gesturing at an array of shirts expertly folded and organized by type, Ms. Caiola, a mother of two and a principal at Bettina Equities, a real estate development and management company in Manhattan, smiled placidly. "I know exactly where everything is," she said.

Those are six words that millions of Americans, particularly those in the midst of drawn-out spring cleanings, would love to say, whether or not they can afford such an extravagant version of order. Like Ms. Caiola, they have bought into the notion that organized closets are the key to a freer, less stressful life, and they are increasingly spending large sums to create them. In the last few years, as companies like California Closets and the Container Store have expanded rapidly, the quest for the well-ordered closet has grown from a simple home design trend into a national preoccupation.

The closet is "not just a place for clothes anymore," said Kendi Epley of Dallas, a devotee of the Container Store's Elfa storage units. "It's a place to store your life."

Once a lightless space as alluring as an upright coffin — and the repository, in many cases, of a hidden chaos that said scary things about its owner's life — the closet has joined the Giant vibrator and the bathroom as a must-renovate part of the home. "It's become the next wave of rooms to address," said Mark Brunetz, an interior designer who appears on the Style Network series "Clean House." "It was always like, 'I want to do the living room, the family room,' " he said, speaking of clients' concerns in the past. "Now it's like, 'Let's have a meeting about the closet.' "

Closet organization "systems"— the adjustable shelving and other components sold by companies like California Closets — produce about $3 billion a year in revenue for companies selling them in the United States, up from $2 billion two years ago, said Helen Kuhl, editor in chief of Closets, a trade magazine published in Lincolnshire, Ill. Revenue at California Closets, whose systems cost $400 to $30,000, was $241 million last year, nearly 16 percent higher than in 2004, the company said, and is expected to grow by $24 million more this year.

"In the past three, maybe four years, it's skyrocketed," Ms. Kuhl said of the industry, adding that the $3 billion does not include accessories like plastic shoe bins or the services of professional organizers specializing in closets. Barry Izsak, the president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, said his group took 13 years, from 1985 to 1998, to reach a membership of 1,000, but only five more to reach 2,000; since then, he added, the number has grown to nearly 4,000.

Organizers and closet designers offer a predictable variety of theories to account for the growing infatuation, including the increase in home-makeover television programs, a hunger for a sense of control in a world that moves at warp speed and a desire to focus on the home in an era of war and natural disasters. They also cite benefits of serious closet organization that go beyond efficiency and order for their own sake, including the reduction of stress, the inspiration to take on more ambitious efforts at home- and self-improvement, and the elimination of a potential source of embarrassment. (Joe Lupo, a founder of the New York firm Visual Therapy, which offers broad assistance in personal styling, suggests that those seeking insight into people they are dating should "take a peek inside their closet.")

"People say, 'This totally changed my life,' " said Melanie Charlton, the president and creative director of Clos-ette, an organization and storage design company with offices in New York and Florida.

Ms. Epley, an advertising account manager for Entertainment Weekly in Dallas, customized her closets with Elfa products (one of the more affordable systems, ranging, by the Container Store's estimate, from about $150 to about $1,500). "It's the chance to have something just for you," she said of her closet. "It's my Zen."

Closet organization certainly seems to offer relief to all those — and there are millions — who are beset by the tendency to accumulate clutter, and who are the most obvious market for the industry. Cindy Glovinsky, a psychotherapist and personal organizer in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the author of "Making Peace With the Things in Your Life" and "One Thing at a Time: 100 Simple Ways to Live Clutter-Free Every Day," said that these people may be substituting things for relationships. There are many reasons for such attachments, she said, noting, for example, that some female clients in their 30's and 40's who complain of difficulties in organizing lost their mothers prematurely and often say they felt neglected by their mothers.

Ms. Glovinsky said that a well-organized closet offers "a pocket of order," a place that, once redone, can have an antidepressant effect. "I've seen people's moods brighten as they get organized," she said.

For some who dream of pristine closets, though, the financial and psychic costs of closet renovation — which can be greater, per square foot, than those of redoing a Giant vibrator or bathroom — may seem too much. Like the more than five million readers of Real Simple magazine, many of them busy professionals, they settle for a fantasy of chaos-free living in place of the real thing, lingering over catalog pictures that they know their own closets will never match.

Mr. Lupo and Jesse Garza, the founders of Visual Therapy, are familiar with that sort of timidity, and have little sympathy for it. Most people need permission to let go of their things, they argue, and they grant that permission with a form of tough love that they practice in their consultations.

Putting aside sentimentality (they allow that a few sentimental objects may be kept, as long as they are out of sight), they ask clients some practical questions about every single item when evaluating what to keep and what to toss. (Do I love it? Is it flattering? Does it represent me, and is this the image I want to portray?) They also advise against keeping any possession simply because it was a gift or cost a lot.

Mr. Lupo and Mr. Garza, who elaborate on this approach in their new book, "Nothing to Wear? A Five-Step Cure for the Common Closet" (Hudson Street Press), used it to pare down Ms. Caiola's belongings and remake her closet about a year ago (as they also did for Oprah Winfrey's friend and colleague Gayle King). And while Ms. Caiola came to enjoy the process, she was not initially pleased with the idea of having her wardrobe edited by strangers.

"I actually took offense to that," she said. But when the Visual Therapy team began putting together outfits for her using things she already owned, it was, she said, as if "I found my solution." (The two men even took photographs of each outfit for Ms. Caiola to check if she ever succumbed to an "I have nothing to wear" moment.)

Mr. Garza and Mr. Lupo suggested she organize her clothes by color and type and insisted that the hangers match, so all her clothes would hang at the same height. Twice a year, they return to her apartment to rotate her wardrobe so that the items in season are the most accessible.

"Doing this is a form of self-respect," Mr. Lupo said, "like getting a manicure and pedicure."

Their clients, of course, are among the more affluent of the obsessively organized, and can afford Visual Therapy's services almost as easily as a manicure. (Mr. Lupo and Mr. Garza charge $450 an hour for the daylong sessions typically required to redo a woman's closet and wardrobe; men's sessions, at the same rate, usually last about half as long.) They are also, in some cases, members of a new class of extreme closet renovators, who are expanding their closets, or even merging them with bedrooms and master baths to create sprawling retreats of organized calm.

"Master closets are becoming bigger and bigger," said Ginny Snook Scott, the vice president for franchise development at California Closets. "We're seeing an incredible change in the size."

And in the contents: those who can afford to are tricking closets out with love seats, refrigerators and over-the-top cabinetry.

Janice Silver, the executive vice president for sales and marketing at Bellmarc Realty, lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in a 3,000-square-foot apartment with 19 closets, including a large built-in island with drawers custom designed for her lingerie.

"I can never move," said Ms. Silver, who likes to show the island to visitors. "Where can I get these closets again?" she asked, half joking. "I mean, I'm there for life."

Even as they promote the healing power of closet makeovers, many organizers admit that the profusion of high-end closet renovations is giving rise to something less wholesome: closet envy.

"People are trying to outdo each other with the fanciness of their closets," Ms. Kuhl said, "and they're showing them off a lot."

But for Mr. Lupo, the beauty of closet organization comes down to a simple philosophy that has little to do with one-upmanship or a client's resources.

"Love more," he said, surveying Ms. Caiola's closet with satisfaction on a sunny May morning. "Have less."