Make room for fall fashion

Before bringing in all your fall fashion finds, you need to make room in the closet.

If you, like I, have lived in a historic house or apartment, you perceive closet space to be luxury. Perhaps you share a closet, which can also be a challenge.

After cleaning out the haven't-worn-it-in-years items and will-never-wear-it-again clothes and donating or consigning, it's the perfect time to organize your closet.

I am by no means an innately organized person, so I've invested in many types of closet organizers in attempts to control the chaos of my closet. Here are some of the hits and misses:

- Avoid organizers that hang on the rack. It monopolizes the space for items you can hang up.

- Organize your clothes into an upside down L-shape to maximize your space for organizers.

- For shoes, the first instinct may be to get the three-rack shoe organizer that sits on the floor. Unless you only have nine pairs of shoes (and I don't know many women who can count their shoes on two hands), you won't have enough space.

This item runs around $29.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond. For the same price, you can get a 36-pair over-the-door organizer. The only downside is that flats won't stay on the organizer well.

- In the spot where you've hung shorter items, buy plastic stacking drawers, which range from $6.99 to $16.99 each at Bed Bath & Beyond. This is the place to put your handbags, T-shirts that won't fit in your dresser and flats that won't stay on your shoe organizer. They may not be as pretty as the fabric buckets, but they're cheap, and efficiently use space because you can stack as many as you'd like.

- If you still have hang-up space, the Handbag Hangup at Bed Bath & Beyond is $12.99.