Ahh the world of the closet lovers. We all must know at least ONE person who lives to fill their supersized, super organized, orgasm producing little spaces full of their STUFF. My friend Tammy has a closet of epic proportions. When she has guests over for the first time, she needs to give them a tour of this “space”– that she paid someone $18,000 (YES, eighteen THOUSAND)
dollars to “fix up”.

Pathetic.

Tammy is one of those people who aim high. She doesn’t work and she just HAS to keep up with every neighbor in her little snooty town. She has all the time in the world to take on the things that should be important, but she would rather PAY people to do it for her. Why? Because it’s the IN thing to do. It shows her value to those who don’t matter in her life. Her real friends, people like me, Kim- we could care less. Tammy sent me the link to this story, in an effort to get me to see the benefits of having a well organized closet. And to show me the benefits of hiring a professional closet organizer to do the work for me.

The only trouble: I don’t have enough STUFF to fill even a very small closet. I don’t use my little “space” as it’s designed for; my closet in my room has a little desk and a lamp and this laptop. And nothing else.

BESIDES its racks of Chanel suits and shelves of shoes by Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin, Rose Caiola’s closet, on the 22nd floor of an Upper East Side high-rise, has views of the East River and the Triborough Bridge. It also has a plush window seat, a telephone, temperature controls and a meditation area with Tibetan bells, Buddha statues and a cream-colored candle.

But one of the best things about the closet, as far as she is concerned, is something more mundane. Standing in the meditation area one morning last month and gesturing at an array of shirts expertly folded and organized by type, Ms. Caiola, a mother of two and a principal at Bettina Equities, a real estate development and management company in Manhattan, smiled placidly. “I know exactly where everything is,” she said.

OK then…does this make me want to puke or what. Why so much fuss and furry over the place you’re supposed to hang your clothes? For the life of me I don’t understand how this is so valuable to anyone.

Those are six words that millions of Americans, particularly those in the midst of drawn-out spring cleanings, would love to say, whether or not they can afford such an extravagant version of order. Like Ms. Caiola, they have bought into the notion that organized closets are the key to a freer, less stressful life, and they are increasingly spending large sums to create them. In the last few years, as companies like California Closets and the Container Store have expanded rapidly, the quest for the well-ordered closet has grown from a simple home design trend into a national preoccupation.

I think it’s more than a national preoccupation. It’s a mental illness. And to think that having an organized closet will mean having a stress free life-these people have far too much time on their hands (like Tammy). They need to just get a life.

The closet is “not just a place for clothes anymore,” said Kendi Epley of Dallas, a devotee of the Container Store’s Elfa storage units. “It’s a place to store your life.”

I admit…under my little antique desk here sits an antique chest full of momentos of my life. I have all my school papers and pictures; all those little drawings and handmade gifts the girls made me when they were little- you know, like a Hope/Memory Chest.

Closet organization “systems”— the adjustable shelving and other components sold by companies like California Closets — produce about $3 billion a year in revenue for companies selling them in the United States, up from $2 billion two years ago, said Helen Kuhl, editor in chief of Closets, a trade magazine published in Lincolnshire, Ill. Revenue at California Closets, whose systems cost $400 to $30,000, was $241 million last year, nearly 16 percent higher than in 2004, the company said, and is expected to grow by $24 million more this year.

“In the past three, maybe four years, it’s skyrocketed,” Ms. Kuhl said of the industry, adding that the $3 billion does not include accessories like plastic shoe bins or the services of professional organizers specializing in closets. Barry Izsak, the president of the National Association of Professional Organizers, said his group took 13 years, from 1985 to 1998, to reach a membership of 1,000, but only five more to reach 2,000; since then, he added, the number has grown to nearly 4,000.

I will say this is a wonderful money making line of work to be in. Maybe I should become a…professional…closet…organizer. It’s so valuable to society and important to people. Saving lives and nursing the sick and disabled is kind of-boring- and doesn’t pay nearly as well.

Closet organization certainly seems to offer relief to all those — and there are millions — who are beset by the tendency to accumulate clutter, and who are the most obvious market for the industry. Cindy Glovinsky, a psychotherapist and personal organizer in Ann Arbor, Mich., and the author of “Making Peace With the Things in Your Life” and “One Thing at a Time: 100 Simple Ways to Live Clutter-Free Every Day,” said that these people may be substituting things for relationships. There are many reasons for such attachments, she said, noting, for example, that some female clients in their 30’s and 40’s who complain of difficulties in organizing lost their mothers prematurely and often say they felt neglected by their mothers.

Accumulate clutter? In other words: JUNK. These people are pack rats who cannot be rid of anything. I know…Tammy is one of them. She has clothes from WAY back that she just cannot part with even though they no longer fit her; even though they are our of style. She has jewlery shelves. She has a hat section, a scarf area. She has so many pairs of shoes- the vast majority of which she never will wear again. She has her closet divided into sections- with seasonal parts to each section. Her closet is bigger than my bedroom. It has a loveseat and table. I’m surprised she didn’t install a bathroom in the area. UN, effing believable. She spends more time in her damn closet than she does with her husband and family.

“Doing this is a form of self-respect,” Mr. Lupo said, “like getting a manicure and pedicure.”

Their clients, of course, are among the more affluent of the obsessively organized, and can afford Visual Therapy’s services almost as easily as a manicure. (Mr. Lupo and Mr. Garza charge $450 an hour for the daylong sessions typically required to redo a woman’s closet and wardrobe; men’s sessions, at the same rate, usually last about half as long.) They are also, in some cases, members of a new class of extreme closet renovators, who are expanding their closets, or even merging them with bedrooms and master baths to create sprawling retreats of organized calm.

A form of self respect? Give me some antacid please. This is not self respect; this is obsessions of the useless! (I’m telling you this is a mental illness). At $450/hr, it’s an expensive illness too! To call a bedroom a sprawling retreat of organized calm– sounds so– rich and famous and spoiled.

I guess I am just too simple for this bulloney. I have a dresser with 6 drawers, four of which hold my entire wardrobe. I don’t need a fancy closet, thats for sure. Call me lowly or poor or whatever- I am sure as heck proud not to be one of these freaks who have no life and who get excited…over their damn closet.