Clothes and closets have a natural way of getting out of control. It's not so much that we do it on purpose (unless "lack of planning" equates to doing something on purpose!), it's just that most people do not have the time to invest in something as mundane as closet organization after dealing with everything else life throws at them.

That being said, there is a good solution for getting your clothes organized and sorted out that doesn't involve any crazy shelves being installed or movable tie racks that cost too much money. No, no - leave that to someone else with too much time and money on their hands! :)

What I'm talking about is the use of portable closets.

What is a portable closet? The term itself often warrants a few chuckles. Closets, by their nature, aren't very portable, being a physical room in a home and all. The first thing you might think of it a closet organizer, but that's something that you put inside the closet. Next you might imagine a wardrobe closet, and that's not very far from the mark. Actually, you can think of a portable closet as a sort of hybrid, down to earth version of the wardrobe closet.

Where it differs mainly is that a wardrobe closet is expensive, bulky (and often beautifully designed too, I must admit), and definitely not portable, whereas a portable is the opposite of all these things.

A portable closet is:

• Designed to easily move with you as needed. This means it may have wheels or accessible handles. It may even collapse into a small bundle (when not storing anything, of cousre!)
• Made of lightweight materials. This means cloth and canvas, not wood or plastics. (Although a plastic frame is common.)
• Fairly inexpensive. Compared to the aforementioned wardrobe closet or high tech closet organizers, a portable closet is a straight up cheap solution for serving the same function.
• A place to store your clothes. As obvious as this is, I thought I'd point out that it's a place to store your clothes, also known as a closet. This means it's going to have features you would expect for a unit that stores clothes. With that fresh in our minds, let's look at those features a bit more in depth.

A portable closet is designed to store your clothes. This is obvious. At the risk of extending on the most obvious points you can imagine, let's look at that more in detail!

Inside (or outside) a portable closet, you are likely to find:

• A closet rod. This allows you to hang anything that will fit on a hanger. Often works best for shirts and pants, but dresses or suits tend to be too long for many portable closets.
• Shoe storage. This means slot for slipping in shoes, often found on the outside of the portable closet for easy access. This is one of my favorite features of any portable closet. Why skimp on having a handy shoe rack built into your closet?
• Drawers or shelves of some kind. For folded clothing, socks, underwear, and illegal items. (Kidding.)
• A hamper/laundry bin. This is sort of a "plus" feature, but I like it a lot and it makes sense. Some portable closets have a laundry bin for your dirty clothes. This is a really nice bonus feature for some uses - for instance, wheeling a portable closet into the guest bedroom. Not only does your guest have a spot to unload his or her clothes now, but there's even a convenient spot for dirty clothes, solving the problem of just where to hide their dirty underwear from the hosts.
• Air filtering / Allergy protection. Some portable closets offer a feature in which air is filtered out before entering the closet space. This means dirt, bugs, and other unwanted stuff doesn't make their way into your clothes.
• Long term storage. In conjunction with the above point, this makes portable closets ideal for long term storage over, oh I don't know, just throwing your stuff in a cardboard box and putting it in the attic. :)
  

This is a big selling feature for portable closets as they are very reasonably priced. This is all the more true, as mentioned already, when you are sizing up other options that serve the same storage function, such as an expensive wardrobe closet.

For $50 to $125 you can get a great closet that will pretty much do anything you'd want a portable closet to do for you!