How to Speak Knowledgeably About Closets?

A closet is a small, enclosed space used for storing items. In British English, it's a cupboard.

• A closet for food is a pantry and for clothes, a wardrobe. A water closet is a toilet and a sufficiently large closet is a walk-in closet.

• The Word comes from the Latin clausum, meaning “closed”. When the Word originated in the 17th century, it referred to a small, private room, often behind a bedroom.

• Today, closets can be built into the walls of a house, taking up no apparent space in a room. The other option is to be free-standing.

• Closets are often built under stairs, making small, awkward space productive. • Before World War II in North America, storage needs tended to be met by chests, trunks and wall-mounted pegs.

• It has been suggested that the post-WWII increase in closets was responsible for migration to the suburbs.

• It has been said that colonial American houses were without closets because of a “closet tax” imposed by the vicious, money-grabbing British crown, but it's more likely that closets weren't needed because people had so few possessions.

• Figuratively, a closet is a place to hide things. “Skeletons in the closet” is a figure of speech talking about sensitive, usually shameful secrets. So a “closet alcoholic” or “closet homosexual” is a person who practices these behaviors secretly. This term can be used humorously, e.g. a “closet comic book fan”.

• To |”come out of the closet” is to admit secrets publicly, but in recent years the secret has tended to be almost exclusively homosexuality. One routinely controversial episode of South Park used this figure of speech heavily.

• Psychologically, closets are the focal point of many childhood fears. Children often live in terror of monsters in the closet, often specifically the boogieman.

• Popular culture reflects this: in Poltergeist, the closet is where ghosts hid. In the comic strip Bloom County, Binkley had an “anxiety closet” in his bedroom, from which has fears would materialise. Opus the penguin, from the strip Opus, had a closet which housed his worries.

And that's it. We've traveled from a small space for the privacy, reading or enjoyment of art, through a small storage space, to the hiding of illicit secrets. This is an enlightening journey.