Are you enjoying your closet with your garments  beautifully organized?  Now let’s make all your accessories equally – well - accessible.

Start at the bottom, giving your footwear collection the same critical review as your garments, eliminating every worn out, outdated or uncomfortable pair.

 If space is limited, consider under-bed storage for evening shoes and out-of-season ones.  Pick a firm plastic unit that slides easily; pushing a soft fabric piece (like Shoes Under TM ) back under the bed is as frustrating as herding cats.

 Lots of options exist for organizing your every-day shoe collection.  Jane keeps hers in boxes on upper closet shelves, with top- and side-view photos  taped to each box.  (How do you spell overachiever? But what would you expect from a physician who also home-schools her two boys?)  

Sue keeps hers on narrow wall shelves, with matching shoe trees supporting the shape of each pair.  Edna is happy with open shoe boxes, clearly visible on her closet floor.   

Standard over-door racks or pocket organizers work fine too.  In each case, the shoes are arranged by color (of course) and level of dressiness or heel height.

Boots are a special sub-category;  I love to secure each pair to the clips of a skirt hanger and suspend them from a closet rod.  That keeps them tidy and prevents damage from fold-over at the ankle.   Use paper strips to prevent the clips from marring fine leather.

 Handbags stand upright on a closet shelf, supported  with vertical file organizers from the office supply store.  I found good options at Office Depot under $20.

 It’s tough to find the right jewelry in the morning if it’s all tangled up in an old-fashioned jewelry box.  Create a row of cup hooks (A)(under $2 per package at the hardware store) for necklaces … organized in rainbow color order, of course.  Mount cup hooks on a door frame, the back of a door,  inside an armoire or wherever else you like.  Cup hooks are also great for hanging belts, spaghetti-strap camisoles and skimpy little nighties.(B)

 A    B   C  D

Earrings stay neatly in matched pairs stored in ice cube trays or egg cartons (cut off the tops) in a shallow dresser drawer.  Divided plastic boxes (D) designed for daily medication doses are also good earring options - especially handy for travel. 

Attaching pins to a length of wide, firm ribbon (C) keeps them easy to find and prevents damage.  You can thumbtack the ribbon to the inside frame of your closet door.

 Large shawls and pashminas hang easily from clip-style skirt hangers.  Smaller scarves can hang that way too if you have rod space.  Personally having an above-average  scarf collection  and below-average closet space, I attached  tiny scarf clips to a heavy-duty tubular hanger to hold all my scarves -  in rainbow order - no surprise.

 Whether you store socks, hosiery and lingerie in drawers or on closet shelves, you can keep them organized in pretty boxes.  Find ready-made ones at craft stores, or make your own by applying  gift wrap or wallpaper to extra shoe boxes.  

Or think “outside the boxes” and store pretty unmentionables in the pockets of a door-mounted shoe organizer.If you have other creative solutions to share, I’d love to hear about them at NancyNRice@hotmail.com.   Next week we’ll look at ways to update some of the questionable items you set aside in Week #1.  

But first check out these additional accessory storage tips sent from other subscribers.