Organization: Matching hangers - Part 1

*This is part one of a two-part topic.  View the exciting conclusion here.

As practically every closet-organizing book/article/blog post will tell you, you need to have matching hangers.*  I like to follow instructions, so I decided that's exactly what our closet needed to be Improved.  It took a while to convince my husband that our perfectly adequate, non-matching plastic hangers would no longer serve, but he gave in eventually.

When I started evaluating the hanger landscape, it was kind of overwhelming.  There are so many options. Entire stores devoted to hangers.  So I decided to take an inventory of our closet first.  I counted all the items I wanted to hang and decided which type of hanger would serve best.  I used Google Docs to make a spreadsheet, but here's a nicer version for your use.
Hanger inventory worksheet


First, count all your items.  All the dresses, sleeveless dresses, strapless dresses, etc...

[Count your items and fill in the first column]

Then decide which type of hanger would be best for that garment type.  For example, I decided that regular dresses would be fine with a basic hanger, sleeveless dresses would need notches to keep the straps in place, and strapless dresses would be best on clips.

[Decide which hanger works with each garment type and transfer the numbers to the appropriate column]

Then add up the columns to find out how many of each hanger you need.

[Total up each column to find your hanger needs**]

Armed with this info, you're ready to go hanger shopping.  (psst, it's expensive!)  That's why I'm going to write a follow-up post on Friday.  Check back after you recover from sticker shock and find out how to economize and make the dream of matching hangers more attainable.

*They all say you need matching hangers and you need to organize your clothes into "three piles: Keep, Donate and Throw."  All of them.

**Don't get the wrong impression.  I totally made up the numbers for this example.  For our household, the totals were far more, um, robust.