Whatsit Wednesday: Wardrobe

Last week I helped a brother clean out his mother’s house in Amsterdam. She had reached a ripe old age and he and his brother were left the task of cleaning things out. In a house like that one comes across all sorts of interesting things among the heavy furniture. Perhaps it had already been dismantled and thrown away by the time I got there, but it was interesting to me that this house had no wardrobe - it had closets.

Most houses in Europe, in my experience, do not have closets. Growing up in the US every house had closets built into a part of the wall of each room. But here, all room are basically just rectangular, perhaps with a small bit poking around a corner or such. But there are no built-in closets. Instead, people have wardrobes. If you have read C.S. Lewis, then you might have an idea of what a wardrobe is like - it is usually big enough for a child to hide in during hide-and-seek. 

Sometimes, certainly after the movie from the C.S. Lewis book, people think only of large, ornate pieces of furniture made of dark woods and set against a wall or in a corner. But it is just as common to purchase a good wardrobe from somewhere like Ikea - a modern piece of furniture made of some sort of flat-pack wood-like material, put together with screws and the help of a good drawing of instructions. 

In our house we used to have an old wooden wardrobe upstairs in the attic. It was a classic “flat-pack” of its time, which was around the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. You could remove the top, sides, bottom and doors (one with a mirror) using metal bolts that went through eyelets on the pieces. An amazing piece, but also a bit wonky. The doors never really shut and we didn’t have the keys. So we gifted it to the charity shop. 

Still, the boys could have hidden in that wardrobe if they had wanted (and if it weren’t full of “stuff”). We still have an old wardrobe in our living room which serves as an office/computer cupboard. Upstairs we have modern wardrobes in the rooms, some with sliding door, some with drawers. But all of them of course take up space in the room. So when you look at a house here, you have to figure in the space for a wardrobe. When people find a house with built-in closets, they are always amazed and pleasantly surprised. 

(Photo is our livingroom wardrobe this morning)