If you never thought that how you handle your hangers would make the difference between stress or no stress in your day-to-day life, reconsider.  In fact, the easiest path to peace and calm is to have all hangers be uniform and to place empty hangers to one side or the other in your closet.

If the marketplace at large offers nothing else, it offers variety.  The choice of hanger styles ranges from the most simplistic wire ones that come back with your clothes from the cleaners to the fancy padded satin and silk kind that pamper your lingerie and sweaters.  Everything in between is only a Walmart or Target trip away.  If you want plastic in any color or wooden hangers that are thick or thin; beige, brown or black, you can find them. Velvet is an option, too.

To craft a closet that is free from clutter, buying three style hangers will fit the bill and each will be used for specific purposes.

First, a white plastic hanger with notches that accommodate the thin straps of a camisole or slip lingerie can be used for most shirts and dresses in the closet.  It is a great choice for a predominant hanger in your closet. Nothing fancy about it.  When the star of the show is the clothing anyway, who needs a fancy hanger?  Functional uniformity is the prevailing motivation for this choice. These hangers are not only easy on the eye, but on the pocketbook, too.

For skirts, shorts, casual pants, or joggers, clear plastic clip hangers are non-obtrusive, yet functional and space saving. For pressed men’s or women’s dress pants, a nice “S’ open-ended, non-slip hanger does the trick.

Bring all the wire hangers to your nearest dry cleaners as most will accept them.  As for the others you no longer will use because you have a higher purpose in mind, go ahead and drop them off with the nearest thrift store or leave them for ‘free’ pick up at the curb.

Now. hang all of your clothes on one of the three hanger styles we have discussed.  Group your clothes in like-kind categories – t-shirts with t-shirts, blouses with blouses, and dresses with dresses.  Hang the skirts together and group the pants in one section.

Next, when you remove an item of clothing from a hanger, relocate the hanger to one side or the other of the closet so that it can be reclaimed when you want to rehang your item of clothing.

Something as simple as handling the hangers in the closet so that hey don’t distract from the clothes and enable you to get in and out of your closet without a lot of visual disruption may not be something monks on a mountain top meditate on, but it will be something that will trigger your inner ‘om’.