Into the Monkey Mill

Monday is Martin Luther King Day, which means it is D-Day for my parents' closet. My mom will be off from work and that is the day we decided to attack it. And I do mean attack.

Being a professional wardrobe cleaner-outer, who has people pay me good money for my services, one
might think that my parents would be eager for me to donate my services to such a worthwhile cause. Nope.
Instead, I have had to cajole, beg, humiliate and bribe them to get my hands on that mess.

This has been ongoing since this past summer, when I spent some time in there trying to help my mom
pick out an outfit for a wedding - at the last minute, of course. It's shocking how two adults with a relatively
clean house can have such a horrific closet. It's like two 12 year old boys share the space, complete with stinky
sneakers.

My parents are the poster children for how not to manage a closet. Not that the word "manage"
should come into play at all. I'm pretty sure that my closet monkeys were bred in there. It's literally
a monkey mill. Well, not for long.


While I'm there, a fashion exorcism may also be necessary.

I will come equipped with:

- net
- tranquilizer gun
- crucifix
- holy water

Fortunately, I couldn't pay my parents to read my blog, so I'm exposing them in here. (cue evil laugh)

Hangin' around in the middle of the night

Greetings from almost 3am. I can't sleep. I have an early day of shopping tomorrow and I should have long been asleep. But one thing is keeping me awake:

Hangers.

I get to go into some of the nicest closets around, but if I see one more closet filled with Joan Crawford's wire hangers and/or twenty different colors and shapes of plastic hangers, I think I am going to scream. Or grab one and hit someone with it.

I'm not a neat freak, and I don't have OCD or anything, but it makes me absolutely crazy to see people disrespecting their clothes and contributing to general closet disarray when it's so easy to avoid.

From my experience, the first step toward having a messy closet is the hangers. If they're all different colors, shapes and sizes, it instantly makes your closet look disorganized. Even if you *are* a neatnik and everything is perfectly organized, the hangers can completely ruin the effect.

No matter how big or how small - or whether it's a shared space or all your own, going into your closet in the morning should be a pleasant experience. The rest of our lives are stressful enough!

I recommend to everyone that they purchase crystal hangers. Because they are a uniform size and clear, they pretty much disappear so all you see are your clothes. It's like your closet becomes your own little clothing boutique. It's easier to see what you have and put outfits together.

I'll write more about clothing organization soon, since it's on my mind.

Check out the classic Closet Monkeys article to see the crystal hangers I recommend.

A New Fave Blog!

When I saw this picture, I knew this blog and I would get along just fine.

Combining two of my favorite things, cocktails and monkeys!

www.blogography.com


Would you ever drink that? I might do the banana liquor, root beer, and maybe rum.

Cheap & Chic at the Salvation Army!

I was excited to do a shoot yesterday for That's Life on Fox 8 at such an unexpected location. For years, I have helped friends of mine - especially those who are single moms with a limited budget - shop for themselves at local thrift stores.

Not only does it help them save money and look great, but it can be really fun!

And with the current state of the economy and with gas prices going crazy, every little bit helps.

That's Life correspondent Rebecca Wilde from Q104 is a true thrift store diva. She really shops at the Strongsville Salvation Army, which is where we were taping, I love that about her - she has a fun and funky sensibility about clothes that matches her personality.

The four tips we highlighted were:

1) Know your days
Yesterday was "Blue Tag Day", where everything with a blue tag was 50% off. Every day of the week has a different tag color. If you shop at any Salvation Army on a Wednesday, you've hit the mother lode - EVERYTHING in the store is 50% off. Whoo-hoo!

(Unique Thrift in the Cleveland area is half-off on Mondays)

2) If you like labels....
They have labels! All in one place. Just look for the "Brand Name Labels" sign. We found Ann Taylor, Talbots, Land's End, Jones NY all on one rack! And you know what's great about that? All those brands are classic. You can wear them anytime and look great. They have a better chance of becoming worn out than going out of style.

3) Watch your styles!
There's a lot of great stuff, but you do have to weed through some potentially disastrous choices - like the multicolored bright, boxy jacket with huge shoulder pads or the plethora of Chanel-inspired bouclé jackets that were all the rage like 4 years ago but today just look outdated. An excellent alternative are cute little tailored corduroy jackets. Bec actually bought one that we used as an example.

4) Shop out of season
I was surprised to see that they had the winter coats out. I assume it was because they have a nice big store and there was plenty of space. Well, you know that when it gets cold, the pickins' will be much slimmer, so buy a coat now when you have your pick of the very best! In Cleveland, winter is always in the back of our minds!

I also put together a couple of outfits. (I took these pics with my BlackBerry, so excuse the warped color.)

This one is an example of something that can be worn to work. It's an Ann Taylor Loft suit (off-white) with a print blouse, some cute peeptoe pumps and green mock-croc bag. This outfit came in at under $30, and just imagine how many different ways that suit can be worn!


Below is a navy linen dress. How fun is this?! Pat Field said that the big fashion statement for the Sex and the City movie is the belted waist. So I took off the matching fabric belt and replaced it with a yellow-orange straw belt. A little straw bag in yellow, orange and pink helped tie the bright pink shoes and large orange earrings together.

It can be fun to shop at thrift stores because you never know what you will find! But limit yourself to 45 minutes to an hour because it can become overwhelming.

Remember - even if it's $8 and a designer label, if it doesn't look great on you and you probably won't wear it, it's still $8 out the window.

Beware of Mouth Monkeys

Fortunately, I am only plagued by monkeys in my closet , but I think this is one of the funniest quotes I've ever read!

About Last Night
What really happens to your body when you drink too much--and why most hangover remedies won't work.

David Vanderveen figures he should know better. But during a family party last Christmas, Vanderveen, 38, a normally temperate kind of guy, downed several glasses of champagne and Scotch before slurping some Boerenjongens, a Dutch concoction made from whisky and raisins. He spent the next morning on his couch, nursing a heaving stomach, headache and other assorted ills. "I felt like a monkey died in my mouth," says Vanderveen, cofounder of XS Energy Drinks, based in Laguna, Calif. "It wasn't pretty."

Read the full article from Newsweek.