Skirt hangers.
In my mother’s mind, they’re God’s gift to skirt-wearers.
I know this because she has been giving them to me.
Over and over.
Year after year.
Always with a hopeful look upon her face. Hopeful that this item which is the Ultimate Skirt Hanging Solution in her own closet will change my life the way it has changed hers.
There’s hope in her eyes, but little memory. She seems to have forgotten all the other times she blessed me with other skirt hangers.
And all the times she neatly placed my many skirts upon them.
And all the times they were left empty, as skirts lay on the floor.
I’m going to be honest. I don’t get skirt hangers.
“Get” as in understand.
I know the textbook definition, but they truly boggle my mind. Yes, they allow more skirts to hang neatly in a narrower amount of space. Kind of the definition of an organizing solution, right?
But they don’t work for me.
I hang them neatly one time. The one time when I get the hanger. The one time when I’m feeling the hope that something is finally going to WORK.
Then, in the moments of dressing, when organizing isn’t my sole focus (or my focus at all), I yank a skirt off the hanger. And in the moments of hanging up clothing, when organizing isn’t my sole focus (or my focus at all), I hang up a skirt. My first choice is always the single skirt or pants hanger that came from the store. Right next to the handy-dandy hang-em-all-together Skirt Hanger.
If my first choice isn’t available and I have to use the multi-skirt-hanger, Super Busy and Efficient Me deems it best to hang the skirt from just one side of the skirt hanger.
So much faster than going through the hassle of using BOTH clamps.
But even though that who-cares-if-it’s-whompy-jawed decision always feels right in the moment, it never ends well.
So, as my Slob Vision cleared during a recent trip to my closet , I grabbed my camera to take a reality-based picture of just how skirt hangers work in my home.
Then, I removed the hangers and one of the two remaining dangling skirts, and stuck them all in the Donate Box.
Skirt hangers ARE a great organizing solution. But only for someone who will use them. For me, it’s not about fitting in more stuff.
Any organizing solution that is meant to help me keep more is pretty much guaranteed to fail in my home.
What does work?
Keeping less. And storing it in the easiest, most hassle-free way possible.
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--Nony
You are making your mum proud!
You are awesome, Nony! I love this.
Yep, if you don’t use it, you don’t need it!
I agree. totally.
I have lots of single hangers and I bring them all empties down to the laundry room so I can hang things straight from the dryer. I have a closet rod in the laundry that holds the empties or hung clothes for the next hands free trip (I can’t manage the basket and the hanging clothes and the basement stairs at the same time). Also useful for hanging things that are not quite dry.
I have mostly wooden ones from Ikea (cheap and nice) but there are some lurkers from the store or back in the day when I needed to dry clean things.
Now that I work from home I was able to thin the herd to just my favorite nice skirts/pants (that actually fit) that I would wear traveling to the office or a conference for up to a week of outfits. I was shocked at how many nearly identical pairs of black trousers I had.
I don’t care for multiple skirt hangers because I lose skirts that are on the lower rungs. Can’t see them. Not worth the trouble.
I also drag hangers to the laundry room and hang things right out of the dryer. I have a rod put up just for that – it fits between the joists because my laundry room has no ceiling covering them.
I used to just hang them off some of the pipes already up there till some folks the next town over blew up their house hanging stuff on the gas pipe and it came loose.
I measured the space between joists and the men at the hardware cut the rod for me so it would fit after I screwed in the things that hold the rod up. It’s just about a foot and a half, but it’s all I need for that.
I hate the multiple skirt hangers too. I still have 2-3 of them in my closet. I should just pitch them right now! Thanks for the reminder.
I don’t like them, either. They are too much work. 🙂
All of you who don’t like skirt hangers can send them to me. I love them. We have four people sharing one closet. They save so much space. I need more! I can help all of you declutter your skirt hangers!
I keep the skirt & shorts hangers I get when I buy new ones & use them to hang them on, as well as for hanging certain things to dry. They also come in handy for hanging things like table cloths & other awkward items that don’t go well on a regular hanger. I like skirt hangers because I detest having to iron. (Yes, I hang my shorts in my closet in the summer.) I find it’s much easier to see what tops I have clean that match my clean shorts.
Love the “its not about fitting more in”. This is the solution for me and that you keep telling me so well! I need to thin, not organize! These past days it has been all about paperwork – I seem to have brochures for every place we have ever visited dating back 20 years – some so faded they are unreadable. I am working on recycling them all today! (Tomorrow maybe I will tackle the clothes.)
I’ve not tried one of those multiple skirt hangers because I always thought that it and I wouldn’t get on. I think I’d lose sight of garments. Or get ratty when trying to get at one amongst all the others. I did try one of the type for hanging multiple pairs of pants (trousers) because I thought it would be a way of hanging my scarves so that I could see them. It looked lovely when they were all arranged but it was a nightmare to use. It went to the charity shop.
On another topic, I really thought I’d been good about book buying over the last year or so until I noticed the piles of books without a home. So, this week, I have been through two sets of bookshelves. It was a marathon effort because I was moving the contents of each bookcase around and I couldn’t just go through a shelf at a time. Once all the books were all off the shelves and they and the shelves had been dusted, I was faced with making the decision as to what went and what stayed.
After a few false starts, I determined on which genre went where, and then which books were too important not to have a place on the shelves. They really sorted themselves after that. I now have 22 books, some of them large thick ones equivalent of two or three normal books, heading for the charity shop. Those books go back decades. I was holding on to them because… various reasons, outdated reasons. Those books aren’t me anymore. My tastes have changed. The books aren’t outdated, the reasons for holding on to them are. Let somebody else have the pleasure of them. They are on their way to the Oxfam book shop. But, before you all gather around to congratulate me, I should confess…..I have no self discipline. I ordered three new books from Amazon today. I think I’ve just about got space for them. And one’s for work, so that doesn’t count, does it?
I like my skirt hangers fine, but your important point is that what works for one person doesn’t work for everyone. And yes, “it is not about fitting in more stuff!” I wish all my organizing clients would absorb that wisdom!
The hangers I hate the most are the plastic ones sold on TV where you attach everything horizontally and then they fold down, to “make more room” in the closet. Well yes, but then all your items are smushed together and the only way you can access your clothes is to bring it back up again, negating the whole extra room concept. People buy them, but I haven’t met one person who likes them.
I had a client recently comment, when I told her she had too many clothes for her existing storage, “But I just did a clothing purge last year! I don’t know why everything is so full!” and I said, “Because you keep buying more clothes.” “Ohh.”
I use the plastic things you’re talking about, except that mine are metal….I love them!! I never “bring them back up again” to remove things. I do love organizing, and gadgets, so I guess it’s worth it for me. My husband and daughter wouldn’t even consider them, so I guess I must be the only one! I agree, everyone should use what works for them, and what they will actually use.
I use those fold down ones that you mentioned, and I sometimes have used them for a week’s worth of shirts or bottoms on a set next to each other with the ones that I would normally pick from that side first to be the early days of the week and then the bottom of the multiple layers hangers to be the ones that are for the end of the week. Well, that’s when I was working or going to school on week days, now I set up just as many outfits for myself, and now they last longer because I have more relaxing at home days that are loungewear days, and then I just pick out a pair of soft trousers and a comfortable top from the pile of each on my wall hung bookcase, in summer time I switch out the soft trousers for shorts in a pile and a different pile of capri pants. Makes dressing in my routine take about 5-10 minutes and that’s if I do my hair and wear the over the shoulder thing to keep things perky, though these days it’s more like a back brace.
I love the point of this. Need to keep moving in that direction myself, instead of looking at things I have and going “BUT it should work”
Having said that I will add that I have some skirt hangers that have a little hook in the middle that you can hand another skirt hanger on. So it has the advantages of both. I don’t use it well in my closet, because it’s just an excuse to not get rid of skirts I don’t wear more than twice a year. On the other hand it works great in my clothes horse 9-year old daughters closet.
Oh! That’s what that little hook is for. It’s been getting really hot on my nerves because the hook keeps getting stuck on the diagonal of the hangers where the shoulder straps go for the shirts that are prone to falling on the floor.
For those tops, I just put the straps on the hanger hook from the other side than the shoulder that they’re attached to and then let the tension of the fabric hold the shirt on the hanger now. It’s more convenient than the little indents actually holding onto the straps.
My first thought reading this is … thank God I don’t own any skirts. I wouldn’t use the hangers either. I wear leggings and jeans that can be folded and put in the dresser. Of course, my closet is (MAYBE) three feet wide so I have no choice but to keep clothing to a minimum. And it works. I don’t want a bigger closet either because there’s no doubt I’d fill it. And that would be such a waste since I tend to wear the same handful of outfits over and over. Buying more would be nothing but a waste of money and space.
I am definitely all about this! My partner keeps insisting that once we have more pants hangers, that closet will just instantly get organized. And then we buy some, and the mess is still there… which means we need more, right!? I think you hit the nail on the head here!
So- maybe I missed it but HOW do you hang skirts? The skirt hangers dont work for me either- too hard to really use AND I have low ceilings so they wind up nearly touching the floor. For skirts that dont wrinkle- I just loop them over a regular hanger. For the skirts that do wrinkle- Maybe a regular clothes hanger with clothes pins? someone mentioned the hangers that have another hoop to stick another hanger into- I have a freind who puts whole outfits together this way-good for her- I wind up wrestling with the hangers and saying to heck with it– and things get flung……. I dont seem to have the patience. Dont know why- know it makes sense- but my brain just can’t seem to wrap itself around it….. suggestions?
You can buy clips that slip over the bottoms of existing hangers or buy hangers made for hanging skirts or pants. The commercial hangers either have clips or open to close over the waistband of skirts or pants.
Use single shirt hangers. She is saying the multiple skirt hangers don’t work but single ones do. Same for me, i can’t use the multiple ones. If you can’t fit it all into the closet, some clothes have to go. It’s the only solution. Less is better.
I was just talking about skirt hangers to my daughter yesterday. I told her that I got rid of mine because they don’t work for me. Luckily I only bought 2 before I decided I could not get my skirts off quickly nor could I hang them back up again! Now my casual skirts go in a bin and my dressy skirts hang singly in my closet. It works forme!
I love my skirt hangers – but I think my husband has something in common with you. I got him a tie hanger that was capable of hanging about 30 ties – but placing each one in a separate slot after each use seemed too hard for him as he just piled them all on the top slot. I finally gave up on that idea and had him store them in a drawer where he could just drop them in. (After repurposing that drawer, I now have his ties stored in a labeled open container in the closet – so now he doesn’t even have to open a drawer.)
I just don’t wear skirts, solves that problem, lol.
However, never got into the multiple plants hangers either. Just one at a time.
I now put empty hangers at the front of the closet pole so when I go to hang something up don’t have to search the whole rod. Saves me so much time plus helps on laundry day to find hangers so I can hang right from the dryer.
I hate those skirt hangers! Mine always looked like yours. I got rid of them all when I no longer had to wear suits/skirts at work. After a recent vacation, I did all of our laundry and was short 2 hangers. My first thought was “I need to buy more hangers” since my husband bought new shirts for the trip. Then I said to myself – NO! I need to remove 2 items of clothing! I actually convinced my husband to go though his side of the closet and he got rid of 2 bags of clothes. Tada! I now have 8 spare hangers!
Praying some friends will come to the same realization you have!!
I don’t have the same issue with skirt hangers, mine is remembering to look through them if I have a chance to wear something other than pants. I find it hard to find skirts I like to wear repeatedly.