Seasons and Closets while Living in Italy

Having been born and raised in Los Angeles, I was somewhat spoiled and oblivious to seasons, heavy clothing and the whole “cambio di stagione” or changing of seasons with regard to your closet. Let me explain. In L.A. most of us have closets that are built into the walls. Some people have walk-in closets and others have those where you just slide open a door and are arm’s length away to anything you want to wear. So my moving to Italy had an impact even on how I stored my clothes!

Let’s be honest here. Los Angelenos don’t really own winter wear. You may just put on an extra sweater if it is cold but who actually owns coats? Anyhow having said this, living in Italy has a totally different scenario. In Italy, be it the weather (colder than LA) or be it the great importance of how you look, Italians own every type of jacket for every type of weather. You have the light raincoat, the heavy raincoat, the light coat, the heavy coat, the bomber, the leather jacket, the leather coat, the ski jacket, and then each of these in various lengths and colors depending on your attire, shoes etc. So this is a big affair. These are just for outerwear. The same holds true for clothing. You have the light pants, heavy pants, jeans, skirts heavy or light, suits, shirts of all types, sweaters of all fabrics, weights, colors, etc.

Anyhow what happens when the seasons change?? If you move to Italy, you will see that there are no walk in closets, at least I have never seen any yet. Instead Italians have beautiful armadi or closets that are furniture pieces. These armadi have two levels in that the bottom level you put all the clothing of the current season except the long apparel like coats that go in another section of the armadio. On the top level you put all the apparel of the next or last season. This is where it gets tricky. Basically on the days you decide to do the change of clothing you take a long stick like instrument with a hook on the end (I am sure this has a name) and one by one like a balancing act, you put the hanger on the hook and place it ever so carefully on the rod above. I laugh when I think of this because you have no idea how many times the whole thing just fell on my head. I opt now to stand on a chair and do it the old fashioned way.

Oh don’t even ask me where Italians place their shoes??!! Again in LA you just place them on a shoe rack at the bottom of your walk-in closet or something similar. In Italy there is another piece of furniture called the scarpiera which is meant to hold shoes. However the space allotted to the shoes is somewhat small and does not hold ankle boots or regular boots nor my husband's shoes which are too big. So what do we do?? We have shoes everywhere, stacked ever so carefully as to not ruin them. I try to be somewhat organized in my stacking, with shoes for the current season at least in the front in view and others in the back. We are big on shoes but that is a different post altogether. Living in Italy means being creative with space and using it very wisely.