A Place for Everything: Organizing the Stuff of Life

There's something about a closet door that stimulates curiosity. Who among us doesn't want to take a peek behind it, especially when it's in the home of a friend who has a real eye for design and who also possesses the keys to being organized?

Peri Wolfman and Charles Gold have those very friends, and they persuaded them to open their doors and share the secrets of stylish storage. Their aim was to provide original and creative solutions for the problem of keeping up with all the things that accumulate in our lives.

What they found was that you don't need to build new storage (though there is a plan for an everything closet to cover all needs). Once you start arranging by shape or color or you invest in some great old cabinets or baskets, what was once clutter can become a collection. Vintage or new pegs and hooks are great to look at and can hold it all, from necklaces in the bedroom to coats and hats in the mudroom. Old benches can be stacked as bookshelves. Runners can be installed on the bottom of kitchen shelves, doubling your storage space for stemware. Drawers can be retrofitted with special slots for your silver, or you can amass a collection of pressed glass and use it to display your cutlery.

A Place for Everything is filled with stylish and sensible advice for clutter control in kitchens and dining rooms, living rooms and dens, bedrooms, baths, sheds, and basements. And tucked between the chapters are special sections with ideas for coping with photographs and collections, paper and pencils, and countless other little items. What's more, A Place for Everything gives you a chance to peek behind all those closed doors.