2013-05-20-Lockerroom
Seminars@Hadley
The Men’s Locker Room – For Men Only!
Presented by
Garry Bowman
Moderated by
Doug Anzlovar
May 20, 2013
Doug Anzlovar
Welcome to Seminars by Hadley. My name is Doug Anzlovar. I’m the Dean of Educational Programs and Instruction at the Hadley School. I will be your moderator and co-presenter today. Today’s seminar topic is The Men’s Locker Room. We’re going to discuss men’s wardrobe, clothing, doing laundry, taking care of your hair and other important things that’s “guy talk.” So, hopefully, there’s only guys in the room with us here.
Without further ado, I’m going to introduce our co-presenter today, Mr. Garry Bowman. Garry has a BS in Special Education and Technology Education, as well as a Masters in Rehabilitation. He’s published articles in JVID and the Renew Newsletter magazine. He has been a speaker at the National and International conferences.
During the past 30 years in the blindness field, Garry has held positions in Illinois as a Vocational Rehabilitation teacher and later as an Assist of Technology Specialist, as well has been a state-wide teacher, consultant, specialist for the Texas Blind Services.
Currently, Garry is doing independent contract work. His hobbies include raised bed gardening, computers, stained glass, and research learning styles. I’m going to hand the microphone over to Garry so he can briefly say hello and then I’ll get started with our first seminar topic.
Garry Bowman
Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Doug, for that kind introduction. I believe we’re going to have a great time today. Doug—back to you.
Doug Anzlovar
Thanks Garry. I thought one of the first things that we could talk about in today’s seminar is organizing your clothing. This is always, I don’t know about you guys, but for me, tends to be challenging from time to time. So, keeping your closet and drawers organized, knowing what clothes you have hanging in your closet is really important to staying organized. Each of us probably knows we have varying degrees of vision loss. I am low vision, so I do have color vision, but difference between Navy blues and blacks I struggle with, or even dark browns and blacks. Today, Garry and I are going to talk a little bit about different modifications and adaptations types, techniques, that you can use if you’re low vision or if you’re totally blind.
Of course, organizing depends on the degree of your vision loss. Some folks may need to mark their clothing with tags or pins and others may not. It might just be a manner of how you hang the clothes in your closet. One of the things that I always encourage low vision folks to do is to make sure that they have enough lighting in their closet and that the lighting is right. Some closets have no lighting and you can purchase light bars or battery operated lights and you can tack them up in the closet. They usually have a sticky back or they can screw into the wall. So, if you’ve got a closet with low lighting, you might consider checking that portable, or I think it’s fairly, I think, inexpensive to buy these light bars, under $20. You might check into those.
Another thing is to know what’s in your closet, including the color or things. Keeping clothes off the floor of the closet. One of my pitfalls is there tends to be a lot that either falls off the hanger or sometimes I get sloppy and I’ll just piling things up and then I have to re-think all of that. Typically what I try to do is to keep everything off of the floor of the closet. I have a couple of drawer organizers in there that I organize small things into, sweaters, things that don’t hang well that can be folded. Then I have my laundry basket there in the bottom so I organize my clothes so they’re ready to go for the laundry which, laundry is something we’ll talk about in a little while.
Typically what I do I hang my shirts and I hang my pants. I fold undershirts, underwear, sweaters and socks and so forth and put those kinds of things into drawers or those stackable totes. At the “big box” stores you can get those drawer organizers. They’re usually plastic and maybe have three or four drawers. They’re not very sturdy, but if you’re not going to move them around and you’re just going to put them in the bottom of your closet, they usually fit the bill. The key is to not overpack the drawers because then they do tend to fall apart.
Where I am living right now, my bedroom closet is really small. I’m used to walk-in closets where I have all kinds of room for things. And right now my bedroom closet is small, so what I have to do is organize my closet at the beginning of every season. So, about a week ago, I took out all of my sweaters and winter-type shirts and clothes and sweatpants and so forth and I packed those in the plastic totes and slid them under the bed and got them out of the way. Then, out of those totes from under the bed, I took all of my summer clothes and hung those up in the closet. Even though I have a small closet, I figured out a process for trying to stay organized.
I do hang all of my shirts in order. I usually try to hang all of my long sleeved dress shirts together. Then my short sleeved button down dress shirts and then my polo shirts and T-shirts I typically fold those and put them in a drawer. Work and dress pants usually hang next to the shirts. I only have one rod in my closet. Some people, in my other house that I lived in, I had my closet redone so that I had a double rod. The top rod was about forehead level, maybe a little higher and I was able to hang all of my shirts there and then there was another rod just probably above between the knee and waist level that was at the bottom of the closet. That’s where I hung my pants. So, on the top row I had shirts and on the bottom row I had pants. And that worked out well, too.
My biggest problem is separating the blue and the black socks. What I try to do is, I don’t know about you guys, but what happens to me and I fall into this pit once in a while is, I find a pair of socks, I find a shirt, I find a pair of pants that I really like. They fit well, they’re comfortable, so then I want to get that same pair socks or same pants in different colors. But what I’ve learned to do when it comes to black and blue socks, especially the navy blue is, I try to avoid doing that. I try to get a couple of different styles of socks. Try to get my black socks one style and Navy blue the other.
Again, I don’t use clothing tags or pins to hold my socks together. I do my own laundry, so that’s just a little way I’ve figured out how to get around having a blue and a black sock on at one time. I always also try to divide my dresser drawer where I keep my socks, use dividers or use smaller plastic boxes to go inside the drawer and it can hold things. There’s not really a right or wrong approach. It’s kind of whatever you feel you need to do to keep things organized.
As far as comfort goes, I mentioned this a few minutes ago. It’s difficult to tell things apart when everything is the same. As much as we like to buy a pair of brown shoes and a pair of black shoes, maybe in the same style because they’re comfortable, just be mindful that you might need to use a different method to mark. You might put a little raised dot somewhere on the tongue of the shoe or on the back of the inside by the heel. Nothing pronounced enough where it’s going to rub on your heel as you’re walking, but just some sort of a marking. If you do tend to buy the same style of shoe in a different color, you can tell them apart.
A couple of more things and then I’ll turn over to Garry. Typically, I have Khaki colored pants which is like a light tan, although now days, the manufacturers are calling it Khaki is actually, I guess, kind of a style of pant. Because I’ve noticed when I bought pants even a dark brown pair or a grey or olive colored pair is considered a Khaki pant. So, Garry may have some insight into this. I’m not sure. Khaki in my mind always referred to a tan color, not a dark brown, but more of a tan, and that it goes with most colors of shirts. It’s kind of a neutral, what I like to call, a safe color. So, anyway, I have a couple of Khaki pair of pants. I do have a dark brown and I also have a black pair of dress slacks because it’s important usually when you’re dressing up for an event or something, guys might typically tend to like to wear a dark black pants or dark grey or something. So I always make sure in my wardrobe I have at least one pair of nice black dress pants. I have a couple of pair of jeans. I usually have a Navy blue pair of jeans, like a dark Navy, and then I have a pair of black jeans because sometimes, depending if you’re going out to an event or out to dinner, a nice black pair of jeans you can get away with versus a pair of dress pants. It just kind of depends on the event. I don’t really like to get my closet overcomplicated with 20 pairs of pants. If I have 5 to 8 pair of pants hanging mixed between dress pants, casual, business casual and then like more the casual, the jeans, I feel like for me that’s enough.
Technology is great. I don’t know how many of you are iPhone users, but I have an iPhone and there’s some really cool apps out there. Tap Tap See. I’m thinking it’s a free app, but if it’s not free, it’s probably like $.99 or $1.99. Anyway, this is an app that you can aim at whatever object. It uses your camera. You can take a picture of a shirt and it will tell you “red shirt.” Or you can take a picture of any object, even a jug of laundry soap and it will probably tell you the brand name of the soap and it might even say “laundry detergent.” That’s an app you can check out.
Also, what I’ve done, and we’ll mention this again maybe if we get far enough in the presentation today about mediations and labels, but I’ve also used the camera on my phone to take a picture of a label that I couldn’t read normally, and then what I do is I pinch up, I enlarge, zoom in, the picture and then it allows me—it’s not real crisp and clear, but it does allow me to read a set of directions, or if it’s a medication label it does allow me to read the majority of the label that I need. Kind of a hi-lo tech solution if you need to read a label especially if maybe a clothing label on a shirt or a pair of pants if you’re not sure how to wash it or sure what the material is. If you don’t have a magnifier handy, you might could use your camera phone to take picture and then pinch it up and then by enlarging it if you’re low vision.
When I go shopping for dress attire, a suit, a suit, shirt and tie combo, or a sport coat, shirt and tie, pants combo, I typically either shop with a trusted friend or a family member. Now, here’s my caution. We all have people, well, I shouldn’t say we all, most of the people that I’ve talked with, friends, we have family members or friends who think they know and think they have a pretty good sense of what the current style is out there, but sometimes when we rely on close family members especially, they may be a little misleading. They may dress you the way they want you to dress, versus the way you want to dress. So, not to say that they’re not being helpful, but when I go shopping for dress attire, I typically will go to a men’s store where they’ve got some young to middle-aged guys working in there, sales folks, that really can be helpful in picking color combinations.
Some people have a great knack for picking out color combinations and others don’t. But if you’ve got a really good friend who you really hit it off with and you both have the same types of likes and dislikes when it comes to clothing, it’s great to shop with that person. But if you’re shopping with a family member and you’re not so comfortable with what they pick out or choose or help you decide on, you might get some assistance in the store. Like I said, when it’s dress attire, I typically go to a men’s store so I can get that extra assistance.
If it’s a “big box” store, well, you tend to be on your own with that because you don’t know what sales person you’re going to end up getting. So you may have to ask a wad of questions. What color is this? Does this color go well with that color? And have a sense in your mind what colors go together. As I said earlier, Khaki, if it’s a medium to light tan or even a dark tan, can go with a lot of different colors. It can go with Navy blue. It can go with light blue, red, even some greens. And that’s another thing with regard to color, there’s so many variations of color. Green, there’s different shades of green so you might hear someone say, well, this is Sea Mist Green. And you’re thinking to yourself, well what does Sea Mist Green look like? Sometimes it’s more of a blue green. It has a lot more of a blue hue in it than even a green hue. So, the new colors that have been out the last few years it’s important to really kind of know what you’re getting and ask folks if you’re not sure yourself.
The other thing when you’re buying clothes is to take note of whether it’s clothing that can be laundered at home in your washer and dryer or if you need to take it to a dry cleaners. It’s important to know that before you buy it, because if you do throw it in the washer and it’s something that should be dry cleaned only, you can definitely ruin your new clothing articles. I’m going to stop here and hand the microphone over to Garry and if has anything else to add about clothing and organization in your closet, and then after that, we’ll take a pause for some short questions. Garry, the mic is yours.
Garry Bowman
Thanks Doug. One thing I’d like to mention. You had a lot of good tips for low vision. One thing I’d like to mention is about color vision. About 8% of the male population has a measurable color problem. Usually in the red and green. Men generally see blue okay, but like I said, about 8% of men can’t see reds or greens very well. Now, women on the other hand, only about .5% of them have this problem That’s usually why women are better at picking out colors than men are.