A Hung Jury

Losing my mind over a twisted bit of wire; cue the Mommy Dearest references, of course

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a little OCD because I really love having things just so. Now I will tell you about my hanger journey, which figures in this self-diagnosis. Like most people, I first began hanging clothes on whatever ragtag batch of hangers I found in whatever ragtag apartment I was renting. They were usually a motley assortment of old dry cleaner hangers (sometimes with the plastic bags still drooping from them, like ghosts); a few wooden ones with wonky boomerang shapes; and an ugly batch of tubular plastic ones, in the bleached shades of leftover candy, that you can buy in boxes of 500 for a buck or two. Perhaps there was a skirt hanger in there, too, padded with a scrap of foam.

Photo by Henry & Co. on Unsplash This is a sad apartment closet

Did this faze me? Not at all. I just strung up my clothes any which way and that was that. Occasionally, I noticed that everything was hanging at different levels since the hangers were all different lengths and styles, giving the whole closet a kind of ramshackle quality. This was not pleasing to the eye, but I had bigger fish to fry than my hangers, that’s for sure. Anyway, during those years I moved so often that I left a trail of hangers behind me everywhere I went. I suppose hangers were one of those things no one wants to pack. They have a maddening way of tangling, and they seem so cheap and unlovable that you hardly want to spend the time slotting them into a moving box. Farewell, shitty collection of hangers, and onto the next shitty ones I inherit in the next apartment!

Sometime along the way—Wikipedia tells me it was in 2000—I was introduced to the wonders of Joy Mangano velvet hangers. They were light, cheap, and kept things from slipping, which seemed remarkable, a true hanger breakthrough. These were the first hangers I ever bought for their looks, and the first I’d ever bought besides the cheapie plastic ones from Home Depot, which I resorted to whenever the array of abandoned hangers I inherited wasn’t enough.

Call them velvet hangers or call them a gateway drug: Your choice

They were a gateway drug. I thought I’d only use a few, but once I tried them, I was so impressed that I switched everything in my closet to them, and I couldn’t believe how different it was to have everything lined up like little soldiers, evenly spaced and hanging at precisely the same distance from my closet rod. Was I a closet maniac before this? I don’t think so. I don’t think I’d given my closet any thought at all except how to squeeze as much as possible into it. But now, holy smokes, it looked so good.

I had started with the champagne-colored velvet hangers, and then discovered they came in black, too. I bought those. Then I was disturbed, deeply disturbed, by having a mix of hanger colors, so I purged the champagne ones and got all black. Confession: I had found a cheaper source for velvet hangers (everyone was ripping off poor Joy once velvet hanger madness had descended on the land), and while I liked saving the money, I was discomfited by the slight difference between my first batch (Joy’s) and my next (something from Bed Bath & Beyond, if I remember). I couldn’t begin to justify replacing the mismatched black hangers; I knew I was inching towards full-blown neurosis, but it nagged the hell out of me having them ever so slightly different.

Fortunately, these miracle hangers are not made out of Kryptonite, and with enough rough handling they will snap, so I was comforted by the idea that over time I could replace the microscopically different hangers with ones that were identical. I also became a fan of reading about closet organization, and one principle all of them preached was that your hangers should be consistent. See? I wasn’t out of my mind; I was living a principled closet-keeper’s life.

I think I would have made my peace with a full commitment to Joy, until one day when I was visiting my friend Sally she told me she wanted to show me something amazing. She went into her closet and came out brandishing this:

PERFECTION

DESERVES ANOTHER PHOTO, RIGHT?

Oh my god. If there was a Platonic ideal of a hanger, this was it. Made of thick matte aluminum, heavy in the hand, with a small flourish, almost a wagging little tongue, where the twist forms near the hook, I had never seen a more beautiful hanger. It echoed the shape of a traditional wire hanger, but on steroids. Sally had come upon them in a peculiar way. The owner of Dodco — manufacturers of “fabricated wire products and laser etching” — had somewhat randomly contacted her to rewrite the copy on his website (among other things, Sally is a writer). While perusing the website, she fell in love with these Platonic Hangers, so she asked the owner to pay her in hangers rather than cash. At that time, Dodco didn’t sell its gorgeous hangers to the public; they were marketed just to commercial accounts, and you could just picture them in the cloakroom of a Wall Street firm, clanking as deeply and sonorously as a church bell when you pulled your Burberry trench coat off one.

I went crazy. Sally gave me a few of hers, and then asked Mr. Dodco, Inc., if we could buy more, even though we were not a commercial account. He obliged. I started hoarding them, figuring it might take me a few years to completely transition from Joy to Man of Steel, but I was committed. Sally’s father fell in love with the hangers, too, so the three of us would divvy up each shipment from Mr. Dodco a little jealously. It was no small outlay, I might add. I had gone from using whatever I found in the closet, to velvet hangers which were pretty cheap, to luxury hangers, investment-level hangers, that cost real money.

Oh, I loved them. They had their flaws. The metal was slippery, and if I didn’t button or zip things I hung on them, they would slump to the floor with a sigh. When two or three of the hangers were empty, they would clatter together, and it was not quite as bell-like as I had imagined: It was more like a truck with a loose bed driving over a speed bump. And they were heavy. That wasn’t really an issue until I was getting ready to move, and the thought of paying per pound to move my weighty hangers worried me. I gave a load of them to Sally, feeling a little teary when I did, but kept a dozen or so—maybe I’d use them in the front coat closet, where their beauty would be best appreciated.

We relocated to Los Angeles and I needed hangers, as one does. There were one or two that had been left behind by the previous owners, beautiful and impractical mid-century wooden hangers with weirdly long stork-like necks. I couldn’t imagine what use they had. In a rush, I went to Bed Bath and got a fresh load of velvets. It felt a little like remarrying your ex-husband: Comfortable, verging on overly familiar, verging on all wrong. We have small closets in our Los Angeles house, so I was preoccupied with how I could eke out every available cubic inch. And now I hated those velvet hangers, for no reason at all. I just hated them. I couldn’t relive my Dodco obsession either—too expensive, too hard to acquire, too heavy, too clanky.

Believe it or not, I am not the only maniac obsessed with hangers. I discovered that the New York Times’ Wirecutter column had delved into this rich, rich topic, and I couldn’t wait to see what it advised. The first suggestion was for some pedestrian wooden hangers, which were not for me—space hogs, splinter farms, boring. Then there was a shoutout for Old Joy—kudos to Ms. Mangano for still being a hanger queen twenty-four years after starting her company! But I was done with her. Finally, a keeper:

Mawa, baby. Sleek as a sports car

Not the beefiness of the Dodco fellas, but still aluminum. Coated with rubber, so no more slipping shirts. And slim. It’s in the name: Mawa Ultra-thin Space-saving Hangers. Ultra-thin sealed it for me. I went in deep, ordering batches of twelve at a time, spending many boring hours moving clothes from my velvets to my sleek new German models. The discarded velvets are in a huge bin in my basement: I discovered that donation places like Goodwill do not want hangers. I’m away from home for a few weeks, so I can’t provide a photo of my closet in its new, slim state, but I will.

Does this preoccupation mean I’m out of my mind? I am, if having order in your life is crazy. You might find it by colorizing your books or alphabetizing your spices or using your label maker on every known surface. For me, it was my hangers, and I am finally at peace. Amen.

SHOW NOTES

—I’m in Chicago at a writers’ residency, and it’s snowing and really, really cold. I unfortunately packed for early spring—daffodil weather. It’s not. I did discover that you can buy decent socks at CVS, and I’m wearing all three pairs of the three-pack I got while I’m inside.

—I just watched the marvelous 1970 documentary by D. A. Pennebaker called “Original Cast Album: Company” about the recording of, yes, the cast album of Stephen Sondheim’s show “Company”. It’s so great. It is astonishing that everyone, including the singers, are smoking like chimneys.

—For the book I’m working on (it’s a memoir) I just reread a few pieces by Joseph Mitchell. My god, he was so good. The pieces are moody and dense in a marvelous way, and he captures a New York that just doesn’t exist anymore—a city of fishermen and shabby bars and pensioners’ hotels. If you haven’t read anything of his, I recommend starting with Up in the Old Hotel. But they’re all great.

—I’ve been just thrilled by the response to Wordy Bird. Thank you all for your interest! This is a reader-supported effort, so if you’re so inclined, please consider getting a paid subscription.