Should I invest in a nanny-cam?  Maybe that’s extreme, but how else can I catch that mischievous little closet fairy in the act?  For years, she’s been subtly shrinking the dimensions of my one-and-only closet.

Like most city-dwellers, I daydream of the perfect walk-in closet; however back in 1888, my brownstone apartment was designed with eleven-foot ceilings and no closets.  Years later, a tall but narrow closet was built into one of the bedroom walls.  So oddly shaped is this closet, I’ve yet to find an organizing system to fit.

Hangers touching, my garments weigh down a closet rod that’s starting to buckle.  My shoe boxes not only cover the closet floor, the extras are piled atop the sweater and hat boxes on the overhead shelf.  Not your typical closet, I need a six-foot wooden painter’s ladder to reach most of what’s stacked on that scary high shelf.  Like playing dominos – one false move and it all comes crashing down.  Over the years, I’ve been pelted with purses and stabbed with stiletto heels.

So cramped for closet space, I’ve guilted my mother into letting me keep off-season clothing in my childhood bedroom closet.  Having some of my apparel two-hundred miles away is unsettling, but it beats paying the neighborhood loan shark-dry cleaner to store my belongings off-site for an absurd monthly fee.

Last weekend, while in the midst of my seasonal closet switch-over, I found evidence of the closet fairy’s latest prank.  In addition to my clothing no longer fitting in the closet, some of my favorite garments actually shrunk during their winter hibernation!  I imagine the closet fairy hiding in a pocket, giggling as I lie on my bed struggling to zip up a colorful pair of summer Capri pants.

I give up.  It’s time to weed out.  Donate some of my gently used clothing.  Maybe that’s what the closet fairy intended all along.