How to Organize Your Closet
HOW-TO
There is nothing as frustrating as trying to find a piece of clothing or any accessory that is buried in a messy and disorganized closet. But closet organization is about more than just being able to find your clothes more easily. It’s also about protecting your clothing.
When your closet is disorganized, clothes wind up on the floor getting creased, wrinkled, and possibly stepped on, stained, or ripped. When you don’t have enough space in your closet, your clothes get shoved together, which results in zippers snagging on fabrics and buttons getting caught on the clothes next to them.
An organized closet saves on repair costs and clothing replacement costs. Take a look at some important closet organization tips that will help you more easily find your clothes and help protect your wardrobe.
Start by Decluttering
The first thing that you need to do is get rid of the clutter in your closet. You probably don’t need everything that you have in there, especially if the closet is overstuffed. Take everything out of the closet and separate it into items to keep, items to toss, and items to sell or donate.
While your closet is empty, it's a good time to figure out what closet organizing accessories you’re going to use and make sure that they’re going to fit. Use a tape measure to measure the walls and shelves, and assess the items you’re keeping to decide which organization tools you need.
Do you need more shelves? Should you move a dresser into the closet? What about a shoe rack, or hanging baskets for socks or scarves? If you’re on the shorter side, can you store a small step stool in the closet so that you can easily reach higher-up items without disturbing the items below?
Putting Your Clothes Away
As you return the clothes that you’re keeping back to the closet, take care to put them away in a manner that won’t allow them to become easily disorganized again. It helps to group like items together; put all of your sweaters together in one spot and your jeans together in another spot, for example. Separate your work clothes from your weekend clothes.
It also helps to think about when you’ll be grabbing which clothes. If you’re getting up at 6 am and leaving the house at 7 am, you probably don’t want to spend a lot of time hunting for your work clothes, so put those front and center. If you only need your fancy or formal clothes once a month or less, those can go to the sides or the back of the closet where they won’t be in the way of the items you wear more often.
Maintaining Your Closet
Once you have the closet organized, you need to make sure that you maintain it so that it doesn’t become disorganized again. Make it a habit to clean your closet about once every month. Do it on the same day that you change your air conditioning filter (assuming you change it monthly) or the day you pay your rent/mortgage if it helps you remember. The more often you do it, the easier it will be to maintain.
You can also plan on doing a big reorganization once every six months or so. Even if your closet looks neat, it’s worth going through it once or twice a year to get rid of things that no longer fit or that you no longer want to wear.