I can remember way back in our good old days when our children were still little and I had one good dress at a time.

It served for all dress-up occasions. When I finally got a new dress, the old one was retired to everyday status. My whole wardrobe looked lonely in my half of our closet.

Then the kids grew up and moved out, and occasionally moved back in for short periods of time, sometimes with their whole family. However, it’s just been Bill and me for a while now, alone with three closets.

At first I kept my half of our closet while I slowly moved new purchases into what had become the guest room closet. I put fall and winter clothes on one side and kept spring and summer on the other side.

Somehow my wardrobe continued to grow. As I explained to my husband, I believed as a teacher, standing up in front of all those children 180 days a year with little change in academic content, I could at least provide them with some variety by wearing different outfits.

“Must you have a different outfit for every single day?” my spouse inquired, with just a touch of sarcasm.

His wardrobe was also expanding I noted. So I moved my jackets out of my half of our closet, and turned the whole thing over to him, except for one piece of exercise equipment neither of us use which got stuck in the doorway somehow.

This left me with two closets or four sides, one for each season.

Pretty soon both closets were full and even overflowing onto over-the-door hooks which each held ten hangers. Clothes must be like wire hangers, reproducing in those dark closets when the doors are closed.

Even I could see that some of the clothes had to go. But where?

A yard sale! All I had to do was find time to sort through the clothes, fix whatever was wrong with them, and…forget yard sales.

Give them away. I still had to find time to sort and fix and…maybe some day.

Store them away until I had time to sort and fix and whatever.

So I bought manageable sized plastic totes, packed the clothes I couldn’t wear, or didn’t need, and toted them up to the attic. But now the attic is full.

The obvious answer, at least to me, is to build onto the house. We really need a gathering room to handle the family get-togethers during inclement weather. Bill would like to have a garage built onto the back someday.

So I presented a perfectly marvelous plan. First we would add a gathering room with a nice bath and shower. This way when we are too old to climb the stairs, we could just live on the first floor.

He was not opposed to the idea, so I expanded on it.

Then we would add a two or three car garage onto this. I had his attention. He said maybe we could skip the gathering room, and add the extra bathroom and a nice garage we could use for family gatherings.

I agreed. After all, the gathering room could be eliminated. But then I said, “Then we could add one nice big room above the garage.

“For what?” he asked.

“A big walk-in closet with one of those big automatic racks like the dry cleaner has. The one where you push a button and the clothes come around to you. And we could have shoe racks on one side and drawers down the other and…”

Never mind what he said, but I think we’re going to wait awhile for the garage.

Author’s Note: This column was first published in the Greenville Advocate on Jan. 31, 2001.