Evening star., 1936-02-02

N1N with which its COM
eS\ kA fort is acclaimed and
AkM the facility with
which it may be made
attractive. because its unpretentiousness dis
arms criticism. The one disadvantage in its
lack of size is the difficulty of keeping it free
from confusion. In fact, a single object
brought into it puts the whole room out of
order
One can be comfortable in very small quar-
tiers, only if there be put-away place for
everything and everything be kept in it. In
other words, small rooms with big closets are
easy to live in, whereas much bigger rooms.
with nowhere to put anything, mean either
to live in or to struggle against perpetual
confusion
In large house that has proportionately
large closets the economical arrangement of
space is not important. But in small house
still mere emphatically, small apartment
- making the utmost use of every inch of
space is an exacting mathematical problem
for an owner of ingenuity to study personally
and particularly.
The architect will have included closets, of
course, though not further than making sure
that each bedroom has a rectangle marked
"clos" and that somewhere else are two more
marked "coats" and linen" Therefore, it is
wise house builder who will take the time to
measure these proposed rectangles and to
measure his possessions and make sure that
they will fit.
This is not criticism of the architect! On
the contrary, an architect no matter how
painstaking - can scarcely be supposed to
measure the belongings of each member of the
family and fit each on such and such shelf
in a specified closet But this is hardly an
exaggeration of what an owner should do. A
closet that won't hold what it is intended to is
useless. On the other hand, when every inch
added to closet is taken from the size of
room, to have it made so big that it stands
rooms space was wasted.
To begin with, then, let us consider few
definite measurements that are useful in de-
Gliding the best distribution of space. A clothes
hanger closet must be twenty-five inches deep
for mems coats with average width of shoul-
der. A depth of twenty inches is plenty for a
woman's dress closet. A closet twenty-six in
ches deep is useless waste of four inches in a
mans closet, or of six inches in a wonan's. OF
course, if this extra width fits into jog in the
plan in such way that it can not be put to
other use then the unnecessary depth doesn't
matter. In fact. it can very we'll be used,
either for wall hooks or shelves for shoes -
standing sideways with fence rails (of small
rods or better, elastic) to keep the shoes from
falling off.
If so much shoe space is not necessary, mar
row shelves with high, boxed-in edges are
very good for sweaters or galoshes or rubbers.
Or again, boxes made to fit the shelves and
kept from falling with a rail of elastic can hold
any variety of personal items. For these,
letter file boxes, either with or without their
enclosed pages, are excellent for personal be-
longings as well as for papers. If these are to
be used. the shelves must be 1914 inches apart
and 81 wide.
To consider each closet exactly as thought
we're wardrobe trunk is perhaps the best
way to realize whether or not you are making
full use of it's inches. In fact. the trunk manu-
factmers - no less than the manufacturers of
special closet fixtures - offer an infinite vari-
ETY. of gadgets to choose from. The only point
to remember is that either they must be
chosen to fit the space they are to occupy, or