Organizing Your Clothes

I was in a hurry the other day and wanted to leave the house imme­di­ately after tak­ing a shower. The prob­lem was that when I checked my closet, I could not find the clothes I wanted to wear because it has become so messy.

What hap­pened was that I have my clothes laun­dered in the friendly neigh­bor­hood laun­dry area and every time they deliv­ered my clothes in their plas­tic bags, I just dumped them in my closet with­out tak­ing it out of the plas­tic bag first and arrang­ing them. I now have around six of those bags inside my closet. This lead me to clean up my closet to make it more func­tional and better-looking. The whole process took me the whole morn­ing. Thank God I don’t have a lot of clothes like some peo­ple I know or it would have taken me the whole day!

But how do we begin this omi­nous task of clean­ing up our clos­ets? Here are some things to con­sider, and some tips that might help all of us:

[Note: many of the items here I got from Squidoo and About​.Com]

1. Before you even have a go at it. Before we get started there are just a few things you will need:

• A few hours of un-interrupted time: While you may want some­one to keep you com­pany, unless they are going to help you, they may dis­tract you from get­ting the job done.
• Three Large Trash Bags: Label each bag (you can write these words on mask­ing tape and apply directly to the bag) one bag: “Trash”, one bag “Keep”, and one bag “Donate”
• Music: Lis­ten­ing to music always helps me and it might help you too. :-)

2. Pull it all out. Assess each piece of cloth­ing and deter­mine which garbage bag you should assign it to:

• Trash: Items that are irrepara­ble (ripped, stained, etc.)
• Donate: Items that you no longer want that are still in decent con­di­tion. Donate to friends, fam­ily or charities.
• Keep: Items that you really love, not items that you loved many years ago, or wish to love in many years to come. These are items that fit and make you look good today. It might help if you actu­ally fit it . Does it (still) fit? Does it feel good? Does it look good? Do you like it? If so, keep it. If not, get rid of it. Remem­ber this rule: if you have not used it for at least a year, you’re prob­a­bly not going to use it ever again.

This whole process is one of purg­ing and helps you not just to end up with a cleaner and more orga­nized closet but also with a more gen­er­ous and open heart.

3. Put them back in. Once you have deter­mined which clothes you are going to keep, you are ready to put them back into your closet.

• Keep clothes orga­nized by cat­e­go­riz­ing them. For exam­ple, on the cloth­ing rod, keep jeans hung together, long sleeved shirts, or if you’re a woman, you might want to have your skirts together and dresses together.
• Assign spe­cific draw­ers by cat­e­gory. For exam­ple, t-shirts only, house clothes, and intimates.
• If you have a large col­lec­tion of “career clothes,” you may want to sort them by color instead of item, so you can quickly find match­ing outfits.

4. Hide the Sea­sonal Items. Use under-bed boxes or those plas­tic vacuum-packed thingees to hide your I-only-wear-these-on-special-occasion clothes and shoes. Just be sure to label them to make it easy for you to find them later.

5. Invest in Stor­age Solu­tions. There are a num­ber of cool and styl­ish stor­age solu­tions (i.e. boxes, etc.) that will last you for many years to come.

6. Main­tain­ing it. All your efforts would be use­less if you don’t main­tain this whole thing. So “clean as you go”. This means that every time your laun­dry comes back, try to put them in as neatly as pos­si­ble. If it stacks up, it’s psy­cho­log­i­cally more dif­fi­cult to orga­nize later on.

Some more gen­eral prin­ci­ples to consider:

In clos­ets, as in life, less is more. The 80–20 rule usu­ally applies: we wear 20% of our cloth­ing 80% of the time. So resolve to unclut­ter your closet space of these 80%.

Place smaller items in front of larger items so it’s easy to see every­thing at a glance and peo­ple don’t need to “rum­mage” through the cab­i­net to find what they need.

Place most fre­quently used items more acces­si­bly than rarely used items—this may mean “in front” and/or “on a shelf that’s closer to eye level (as opposed to a very high or low shelf).

Place heavy/large items in the base of the cab­i­net where they get the most sup­port and will have the least chance of being dis­lodged when other items are being accessed.

Think about light­ing. For a closet to work, you have to be able to see what’s inside it. The impor­tant thing to keep in mind about arti­fi­cial light is that it has to be between you and the con­tents of the closet; if it’s behind you, you’ll cast a shadow on what you’re try­ing to see.

Think “clus­ter”. A “clus­ter” is a core group of five to eight cloth­ing pieces that work together. Go back to your closet with an eye to form­ing sev­eral clus­ters from your exist­ing bits and pieces. Main orga­niz­ing prin­ci­ple is color, not “sea­son” or “style”. Group sim­i­lar col­ored gar­ments together, and think, “What could I add to this group to form a cluster?“Thinking “clus­ter” sim­pli­fies the process of buy­ing clothes. No longer will you buy in terms of “out­fit” — that’s how you get in the posi­tion of hav­ing a closet stuffed with clothes and noth­ing to wear. Adding a piece to a clus­ter means you can wear the gar­ment sev­eral dif­fer­ent ways, using the cloth­ing already in the closet.

That’s all for now and I hope this helps you become more orga­nized and unclut­ter your closet and your life!

Every Fri­day is Organize-Your-Life 101 Day at AngPere​grino​.Com.

Vis­i­tors who read this post also read:

1. Bath­room Clean­ing 101
2. 10 Ways to Get More Wear Out of Your Clothing
3. 10 Home Office Hacks
4. How to Pack a Bag When Travelling
5. How To Make Your Room Smell Good

Quote of the Day: “Beauty comes in all sizes, not just size 5.” — Roseanne

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