Coat hanger

A coat hanger is a device for hanging up coats, shaped like a pair of shoulders with a question mark on top. It spends its entire life holding coats it will never get to wear, and does not complain.^[1]

Coat hangers are best known for multiplying in wardrobes when nobody is looking. A wardrobe left closed for one year will contain, on average, 40% more hangers than before, and the same number of clothes, or fewer.

Multiplication

In 1993 a sealed wardrobe was monitored for twelve months by the Department of Closet Affairs. It began with ten hangers and ended with fourteen, one of which was made of wire and had no explanation. The department's final report concluded that the four extra hangers had “come from somewhere”, and the matter was closed.^[2]

Types

• Wooden: for good coats.
• Plastic: for ordinary coats.
• Wire: for nothing in particular; it arrived on its own.
• Padded: for clothes that need emotional support.
• Trouser: for trousers, which fold over it and pretend to be a coat.

Tangling

When two or more wire hangers are stored together they form a single structure that cannot be separated. Engineers have studied the problem since 1952. Their most promising result to date is a proposal to call the tangle one large hanger and hang things on it.^[3]

See also

• Drawer – the wardrobe's flat colleague
• Sock – vanishes at about the rate hangers appear
• Doorknob – where coats go when there is no hanger

References

1. Hook, H. (1993). Twelve Months in a Wardrobe. Department of Closet Affairs.
2. Rail, R. (2008). Where They Come From. Wardrobe Press. p. 1.
3. Wire, W. (1952–present). “Untangling: A Progress Report”. Closet Engineering 1: 1.