Shoe Organization Tip

My friend, Janie, amazed me with this shoe identification method. She has photographed her wonderful collection of shoes, then printed the photo and attached it to the end of a clear shoe box. This sure beats my black marker ID method with words like "silver heels". The shoes boxes pictured here are on an upper shelf in her closet. Her more frequently worn shoes were on an easy to reach shoe rack and casual flat sandals were lined up in rows inside a basket with the toe end pointing up on the bottom of her closet.

Wardrobe Planning Math

When I give corporate presentations and discuss wardrobe planning, I often suggest that you do some math. If you live in a warm climate like Southern California, and you were building a jacket or suit wardrobe you would need mainly transitional weight garments. That is, fabrics that can be worn most of the year. Therefore if you had 5 jackets, 3 should be transitional, 1 should be for cool weather, and 1 for hot weather. That's a proportion of 3:1:1. This formula would change according to the climate you live in. It should also help when you are doing a closet audit and deciding what to eliminate or add.

The jacket illustrated is a good transitional piece. With a white scoop neck tank, white pants and open toe shoes, it would be a great summer look. With a navy turtleneck, navy skirt, tights and boots, it would now be a great winter look. As pictured here with the navy pants or with a navy skirt and pumps instead of sandals, it's a perfect year round business look.