When the weather turns cold and our clothes turn clunky, our closets seem to shrink. That's especially true if you -- like me -- still have leftover bridesmaid dresses crammed in there.

My sister is only a few weeks away from delivering my first nephew (okay, her first child) and she's been "nesting" for months. She's cleaned out any extra stuff from every closet, drawer and shelf in her whole house. Every time I visit, she offers some of her unearthed findings to me before she makes another trip to make a donation to Goodwill. One of the items I happily took home with me was a box of Space Bags.

We've all seen the infomercial (photo at left): take a closet full of bulky comforters, clothes and pillows, stuff it in the clear plastic bag, zip, and attach your vacuum hose to the bag. Voila -- the stack shrinks to a shadow of its former huge self. Could it really be that easy? Yes, it is!

I reclaimed some precious space in the closet by putting all of those dresses into a slimmer, shrunken hanging space bag. There are only two caveats. One: don't overfill the hanging bag or the hanger holder at the top could come apart, which breaks the vacuum seal. Two: don't put in clothes you want to access easily -- you'll have to re-seal and vacuum the bag every time you remove/add items.

Overall, though, it feels fantastic to reclaim some closet space. It's the closest thing to returning to a time when you didn't have to allocate a corner of the closet to dresses you didn't even pick out... back in the BB era... "Before Bridesmaid-dom."