Andy writes: I don’t have the most closet space in the world, and the more clothing I get, the less room I have. I also live on the East Coast where we have 4 distinct seasons. Do you have advice on how to store your seasonally inappropriate clothes, and which clothes do you leave out all year long?
When I finally got an apartment with some storage place, I bought about a dozen plastic bins from Costco. Mine are a lot like the one above, but with hinged tops. They cost about $6 each. When it’s time to put away winter clothes, that’s what I use.
I start by making a pile of all the stuff I absolutely won’t wear in the off-season. That means white pants, white shoes, sandals, linen, seersucker and shorts for the winter and wool ties, heavy sweaters, seasonal sweaters, overcoats, bulky jackets, and tweedy sportcoats for summer. They go in the boxes, usually with a packet of some kind of anti-moth stuff; moths aren’t a huge problem around here, but I’d hate to find my wool got eaten.
I fold my stuff carefully on the way in, and find it doesn’t usually need much more than a hang-up to straighten out. Sometimes I’ll send it out to the cleaner after I hang it up, but I dry-clean my woolens pretty rarely, so sometimes I don’t bother.