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The president's cabinet wasn't always as official as it is now. During the days of the revolutionary war, the “cabinet” or as it was called back then “The President's Boys/Men” depending on the situation, was an informal group at best. The group consisted of Washington's 3 favorite Aide-de-Camps; his secretary, Alexander Hamilton, a french aristocrat, Le Marquis de Lafayette, and an American revolutionary, John Laurens.
When introduced to mixed company, the three men were there to help Washington with his daily routines of writing letters and training soldiers and essentially were assistants. Hamilton wrote all of his correspondents, Lafayette was his translator and strategist, and Laurens did everything that Washington couldn't do himself like delegating the distribution of supplies and seeing to issues too small to really need the general's attention. Introduced formally, they really were the start of the modern cabinet.
Introduced informally, to French dignitaries and others of more... eccentric taste, they were not only Washington's helpers but Washington's play things. He emphasized possession when stating that second description. The President's boys were pretty young men to be paraded at parties and to sit at Washington's side during speeches and meetings. Those who were not in the know usually assumed that the reason he always had one to three young men at his side was for convenience, to teach them how modern politics worked, or just that they were close friends.
People who had been introduced to the real purpose of the boys knew that Washington brought them out to be gawked over and complimented by ladies and gentlemen alike. It was a pride thing, Hamilton was Washington's possession and Hamilton was also fawned over by the attendants of the parties, sometimes being called “the prettiest genius in the room,” and something about knowing that Hamilton was appreciated and appraised as being of high worth made Washington just want to keep him close and show him off. Bringing them out to parties was Washington's way of saying “You can look but you can't touch,” to onlookers.
When a real cabinet was formed, some of it's members continued to be closer than the rest. Those who stayed in the original position of the first cabinet as Washington's confidant and lover were given a special seat in the senate. They weren't necessarily listened to more often, but they did get to live in the general's house, under the guise that, should he need to discuss something with them and not want to call upon a formal meeting to do so, he could meet with them easily. The rotations of who was in the newly dubbed “Inner Cabinet” changed as time went on, Lafayette going back to France and Jefferson filling his place and other such changes were bound to happen.
The first official inner cabinet lived with Washington on his estate, rooms and offices for them throughout the house, often all of them kept near Washington's own. The house was large and had more rooms than it needed and servants to keep everything pristine and running smoothly, the perfect place to keep a blossoming government running.
Adams had no inner cabinet, but as a member of a previous one himself, Jefferson kept for himself a few carefully picked confidants.
Each inner cabinet was unique in it's size and it's expectations. Washington's consisted entirely of young men all of whom he expected to keep on their best behavior when he was around. He was like their drill sergeant and their father, keeping them at their highest working efficiency but also tending to them with care and diligence, encouraging the few of them to at least be good friends with one another too avoid too much conflict within the house.
Washington's house could be considered, if you removed what they did behind closed doors, somewhat standard. George and Martha played the roll of father and mother over the men in the inner cabinet. Martha never had the opportunity to play mother for those in the early cabinet but she spoke of each of her husband's lovers as if they were her own sons and often treated them as such.
Martha herself was fine with her husband taking on several male lovers mainly because they had married out of mutual disinterest in each other. Martha was fond of George romantically but had, for her entire life, thought of the idea of sex of any sort as disgusting to the point of nauseating. George, as you can tell by the composition of his inner cabinet, was not fond of those of the fairer sex and so therefore the couple had an agreement. George's lovers were like stand in children for Martha who knew her husband would naturally desire someone to keep him in comfort in a more physical sense than she could.
From this agreement, the inner cabinet, and then later the full cabinet, came into being.