After 40 years working in the retail industry Bermudian Venetia Stirling found herself without a job last September.At a loss as to what to do next, she found inspiration in an unlikely place, the closet.“I was out walking and said ‘Lord, there must be something I can do in between looking for a job’. The thought came, to do something that people really needed. The thought came that people needed help with organising. I thought of closets.”And so the idea for her new organising business, Aesthetics, was born. She now does closet makeovers, arranges yard sales and provides other much needed organising services.“A day or two after coming up with the idea, a friend of mine said she had to organise her closet, so I offered to help her,” said Mrs Stirling. “I also helped another young lady arrange a yard sale after her mother passed away. She just didn’t have the heart to go into her mother’s house to arrange everything.”Mrs Stirling said when she worked in retail, her prime focus was merchandising so that store goods would be displayed nicely and ready for presentation to customers. This prior experience made her a natural when it came to organising closets and similar spaces.“I find that with the way the economy is today, it is very important that people are organised,” she said. “Sometimes we just crowd things in and don’t really see what we have. We often repeat clothing that we don’t know we have or have forgotten. I saw a couple of ladies that still had clothing with tags still on it. I said ‘how lucky you are, I would never forget anything I had’.“It is a big challenge waking up in the morning and saying, ‘what am I going to wear today?’. When you can see what you have you don’t repeat the same clothing, and feel better not having to start the day thinking about it.”She said one of her main aims is to help people reduce the stress in their lives despite the economic situation in the world around them. In the process of revamping someone’s closet, she will clean and her husband also does home maintenance work, so they can install shelves, paint and do whatever needs to be done.“My first closet was a big closet that was 17ft by 10ft,” she said. “Even though they had all the fixtures in they did not necessarily lay their stuff out according to what they had. There is a right way to do everything. You need the right hangar for the right type of garment. You need to colour co-ordinate things. The coordination of things is important.”Mrs Stirling said Bermudians tend to be very proud and don’t like other people having a look-see in their closets, but she said she doesn’t judge, and she doesn’t tell.“It is a very personal thing,” she said. “Everyone has their layout that they like. No two closets are the same. They are all different sizes and shapes. We are not all that fortunate to have a 17ft by 10ft closet. I like to turn a closet into a person’s own personal boutique. You should feel good about shopping in your closet. There should be a section for everything, scarfs, shoes, accessories, bags. You bought it so you should feel good about it.”For more information e-mail aestheticsbermuda[AT]gmail.com or telephone 531-6321.