Clothes Hangers: A Storage Problem

And how my imagination helped (and slightly delayed) my finding a solution.

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I do most of the laundering at the Van Horn Estate, and I am close to solving a problem that cropped up after I reorganized the laundry room: How can I store the half-dozen types of clothes hangers we use without wasting space or driving myself crazy when I need one of them?

Looking for advice will turn up things like Use a box or Keep them together with rubber bands. The first invites frustration in the form of tangled hangers, and the second in terms of inconvenience. Combining them makes the box work slightly better, but requires an annoying amount of overhead to maintain the system when used hangers come back.

None of my objections to the above are from trying these and similar spitballing solutions, but from taking a moment to think about how they'd work in practice.

The system I used to have in place was adequate: Segregate hangers by type and hang them on a couple of rungs of a drying rack.

But my reorganization took me down from two drying racks and a clothes hanging rod to one drying rack and the clothes hanging rod. Now, hangers on the drying rack were constantly getting bumped off or tangling and the clothes hanging rack is big enough to hang clothes after drying them, but not enough to store all the hangers and serve that purpose well.

The advice was all facile, so how about what is on the market? What do people who stand to gain more than smugness come up with?

Hanger Rack (Image from ULINE. I believe my use is protected as fair use under U.S. copyright law.)

The answer appeared to be two extremes when I searched hanger organizer.

The first extreme was obviously for commercial use. Alas, the hanger rack was overkill, cost too much, and took up too much space.

On to the second extreme, the tiny household...

For smaller households solutions on offer were either stackers or small hangers.

Image from ULINE. I believe my use is protected as fair use under U.S. copyright law.

First, the hanger stacker struck me as good for someone with one or two kinds of hangers and extra counter space. But then I thought about how I'd use these.

I often need more than one kind of hanger when I'm unloading a dryer, though, so anything not on top will waste time and risk me dropping everything stacked on top of it. (Oh, and skirt hangers are a no-go, anyway.)

Hanger ... Hanger (Image from Walmart. I believe my use is protected as fair use under U.S. copyright law.)

Second, we have a hanger ... hanger. This is closer to what I do, anyway, and I could picture installing two or three of these on a wall. I went so far as to buy something like the one pictured, only to send it back, though.

Unfortunately, my imagination had added a hinge that wasn't there to the wall-mount, and I didn't catch myself until the instant I unpacked it.

Not only did I notice a distinct lack of a hinge, but when I checked the Amazon page, I noticed that the way it stored hangers wouldn't work. (It's the same way as the image at right.)

The hangers aren't hooked over, but looped around the rod. This meant two things. (1) Storing more than one hanger type on an arm would be inconvenient since lifting up a desired hanger is impossible unless it's at the end (This is the same problem we saw in vertically stacking hangers.), and (2) multiple rods would require too much vertical space for more than about three rods. (An adult hanger is nearly twice as wide as it is long.)

Hanger Holder (Image from Amazon. I believe my use is protected as fair use under U.S. copyright law.)

I sent back the the purchase and went back to the drawing board.

Since my wife enjoys shopping far more than I do, I told her about the problem and -- after eventually taking her into the laundry room and showing her why nothing she came up with worked, and what I needed, she found what I needed. (Interestingly, I was able to save money by finding the exact same hardware being sold as shelving brackets.)

Well, why aren't you showing me these fine hanger bars, Gus? Because in the process of writing this up, I thought to search for clothes hanger organizer and found what I am showing, which is slightly better, but not enough that I plan to return what I already have.

Soon, I'll have four or five bars vertically arranged against a wall near the clothes dryer, each of which will store one or two types of hanger that I can spot instantly and lift out as needed, and restocking will be a breeze.

Imagination can save or lose time and money. Use it wisely. I think I cam out ahead here, on balance.

-- CAV