Quick: Which room in your house needs attention the most? Kitchen? Bathroom? Garage?
Nope. Your closet.
"Foul!" You cry. "That's not a room!"
"It should be," says Lisa Adams, founder of LA Closet Design. "The closet is where we spend the first and last moments of our day. "This highly used space needs some respect."
In short, Adams, whose star-studded client list includes E! News anchor Giuliana Rancic, Kardashian mom Kris Jenner, Biggest Loser trainer Jillian Michaels, singers Carmen Electra and Jewel, and actors Eddie Murphy and Billy Crystal, is telling me that closets need to come out of the closet.
"They're full of unused potential," she says.
"Not to mention too many clothes."
The conversation gets me thinking of my own closet relationships. Every morning I plunge into mine as if diving into the Arctic sea. I emerge what seems like decades later, shaking my head like a wet polar bear saying, "What year is this?" If I'm lucky I've snagged a few garments I can cobble into an outfit.
Adams promises it doesn't have to be that way.
"A closet should look and feel like an extension of your home, but closets gets shorted by builders who shove in a rod and a shelf and call it finished."
"You mean the buck stops at the closet."
"Closets matter to home buyers. Make them great and you'll add instant value."
I feel compelled to tell Adams about the blue paisley scarf I couldn't find last week, which drove me to call her. I started pulling out all my scarves — some of us go back 20 years — I tell her. No luck. Then I searched through my T-shirts until I had more clothes on the floor than a sorority house.
"I thought my closet was organized," I go on, "but every time I leave, the clothes throw a party. Tops tango with trousers. Purses do the twist. Belts slither like sugar daddies at the disco. And pretty soon, the blue paisley scarf is in the sock bin, which is where I finally found it."
Then I had what could only be called a good idea, I say. Before I put my clothes back the way I had them, which is what got me into this mess, maybe I could find a better way.
"So I called you," I tell Adams, who, after listening patiently, offered this life-altering advice: "Turn your closet into a chic boutique — a store with clothes just for you. You should want to go shopping in your closet every day."
Syndicated columnist and speaker Marni Jameson is the author of "House of Havoc" and "The House Always Wins" (Da Capo Press). www.marnijameson.com.
