Closets? Who needs closets??

We are currently renting a 1300 sq foot house.  I was super excited about sprawling out given its considerably bigger than our Boston apartment.  Plus with 3 bedrooms, it means that Jean and I can have our own bedroom again.  While I enjoyed having Thomas in our room for the first 6 months, I do not miss the days of tip toeing into a dark room at night and sneaking under the covers to play my Words with Friends games while trying to stay as still as humanly possible.  Now we can read at night with the light on. It's a welcome change.

When we first did the walk though of the house the day after we arrived, I couldn't help but feel the place was a little smaller than I was expecting.  Oh well, I thought...we'll make do.  We just need to be good about keeping our belongings to a minimum and optimize storage as much as possible.  Then it hits me - there are NO closets in this place.  I don't mean small closets, I mean not one to be found.  I feel like I had a mini panic attack.  In the US, closets are to homes as cup holders are to cars.  The more, the better.

Okay, I should have known this.  Looking back I never remember seeing many closets in any other houses.  But perhaps it never hit me because it wasn't my house (or my things to store!).  So, what's the solution?  Armoires!  Ironically I have always found that word hard to say in English.  Perhaps because it is something the French have perfected!  I have always seen these massive wooden pieces at houses here in France but it never registered that these are used in lieu of closets. Oh, and when I say massive, I mean MASSIVE.  When moving into our new place, Jean talked about taking the old armorire that was in his room.  For the life of me I could not imagine how it could ever be moved without taking down some walls (the one in mention measures 8 feet high and 6 feet wide and easily weighs 500 pounds).  Imagine my shock when in just 20 minutes him and 2 friends have transformed this impressive piece of furniture into a neatly stacked pile of of wooden planks.  I couldn't believe my eyes.  Even more incredible is that there was not one nail or screw in the entire pile.  It was a masterly crafted jigsaw of wood pieced that can be assembled and dissembled incredibly easily.  Okay armoires - you have won me over.

I took a couple pictures of another armoire that belonged to Jean's grandmother that we moved into the front entryway area.  I will contain the contents of what formerly lived in our front closet (sporting goods, coats, shoes, baby carriers, etc.) along with MUCH more I'm sure.  Insane really.  We've found out that it was made for Jean's great great grandmother in the 1800's which is another kinda cool factoid.  Anyway, I think my new-found love of armoires is obvious.  And for the rooms that don't have armoires - well, there's always IKEA.