Blue and Grey and Brown
The walk-in closet smells like lavender, shoe polish, cedar and dry cleaning chemicals. This is what a man’s closet should smell like. There are 130 shirts (dress and casual), 13 suits, 9 pairs of jeans, 7 pairs of slacks, 25 pairs of shoes, 10 belts, and 14 sweaters. This closet comes with many instructions:
He keeps the sweaters in clear boxes with a bar of Yardley Lavender soap in each box, along with three cedar balls the size of Milk Duds. The clear boxes are dusted regularly.
Because it is the best kind of lavender soap.
He only hangs ties on the tie rack and never with a knot in it. Silk is only so forgiving, he explains as he smooths down the wrinkles from that day’s knot.
No, I don’t need ties that are more fun. These ties are appropriate.
John in an appropriate navy pinstripe, at his college graduation.
His shirts from the dry cleaner are hung on the right-most part of the closet because new shirts are chosen from the left-most. They rustle like fall leaves in their dry cleaning bags as he squares the shoulders and lines them up perfectly.
White and blue are the only acceptable colors for a man’s dress shirt. Pink is for salesmen. I am not a salesman.
Laundered shirts are hung by color grouping and sleeve length.
Your mother shrunk this one.
Jeans in one section, slacks in another, hung legs on the left, perfectly aligned on trouser hangers.
Because that is the correct word for them.
All shoes, even gym shoes and sandals, have shoe trees in them; big, heavy, shoe trees that feel more like weapons than items of haberdashery. They are all cedar.
If you treat them right, all shoes can last a decade or more. These are older than you, dear.
Suits stay in their waxed canvas bags until they are worn, and they go right back in at the end of the day. He tells me where and when he bought each suit, and the thought process involved in each.
No. I prefer dark blue and dark grey. Brown is too midwestern. Black is for nightclub owners.
When I have to clean out his closet, and choose a suit for him to wear in the casket, the choice is easy, as if he was making it for me.
- Beth Dugan is one of our favorite multiple-contributors to Dead Housekeeping and can be found at bethdugan.com