Ready to transform your wardrobe space? Follow these simple steps to organize your closet, making it functional, visually appealing, and a joy to use every day.
The Two Organizing Rules
There are very few organizing rules. Many people on the internet say, “These are the rules of organizing,” but in experience with helping real people, there are only two things to be concerned with.
- Organization is about having a place for everything.
- Being able to put it away when finished with it and easily find it when needed.
It is not really important for things looking neat necessarily. It’s not important to have matching containers, although those are nice. The important thing is being able to see what is there, grab it very quickly when looking for it, and easily put it away.
Accept Who You Are
It is important to accept who you are. There are different organizing styles that work for different people because everyone is different.
Some need to see things, some organize by color, some organize by type. Some love drawer organizers, some don’t. It really depends on you. Organize for the person that you are.
Everyone falls on a spectrum between very minimalist and just needs help, to having way too much and needing to get rid of almost everything.
Often people need help with:
- Maintaining the inventory of items.
- They just need help organizing them because they can’t seem to keep them in order.
- They haven’t practiced enough organizing to really be able to maintain a system.
Organizing is a skill that is capable of being practiced. It can definitely be learned. It’s okay to fall somewhere in this spectrum and not expect yourself to be a very staunch minimalist or somebody who’s a maximalist and has a lot of items to keep track of. The goal is to help solve problems and help everyone get to that sweet spot where they’re happy.
Keep Only the Good Stuff
Keep only the things that spark joy in your closet. Everything in your closet should be a favorite. It should be like going to a favorite boutique. Style and taste may change with age with trends, and that’s totally okay. Everything in your closet should be comfortable. Life is too short to have itchy sweaters and things that just don’t feel right on your body. Life is really too short for that.
Everything in your closet should fit pretty well. Bodies change size and shape over time, and that’s totally okay, but you want to dress for the person you are right now.
If you find yourself vacillating between two different sizes pretty consistently over time, try to keep things around that will fit at both of those sizes, even if sometimes the larger size is a little bit too large when your body is shaped differently.
Things like pants with ties where you can actually tighten the waist so it fits and things that are a little more stretchy will be a little bit more forgiving.
If you need to keep two sizes wardrobes around, keep a single container or two, if you have the room. One can be labeled one size, and another labeled the other size. When a shift is needed, just make the shift.
Everything in your closet should be in wearable condition. That means they’re not too damaged to wear and don’t have too many bad stains that you can’t get out.
In these situations, you can either repair the thing if you really, really love it, taking it to a tailor and asking how to save it. However, if it’s not really worth that, if it’s just a ratty old t-shirt or a sock that was bought at Target, it’s okay to repurpose it, recycle it, and just let it go.
Those are the things that should be in your closet. Everything in there should be a favorite, should spark joy, should make you happy, make you do a happy dance when you open your closet. Everything else? Life’s too short.
Use Uniform Hangers
The easiest way to make your closet look neat for almost no effort is to get matching hangers. Uniformity is the easiest way to make any space look organized, even if it’s not really. When you have a closet full of different shaped hangers, and the shape and type of the hangers, it can make the space look really messy and reduce the functionality of it.
Some hangers from the store curve in, some that you can buy for your own home curve in as well, and then some are flat. Those fight with each other if they’re next to one another. You might have hangers from the dry cleaner that can stick garments. You can have soft lingerie hangers. If you have them all in the same space on the same row, it is absolute chaos.
You don’t have to buy expensive hangers. Those thin flocked hangers are good because if you have a lot of silky little shirts and tops, they don’t fall off. That is the one really amazing perk of those hangers. They’re also really thin, so you can stick more clothes in. They just need to be similar. They need to be a similar shape. You can even mix and match colors, but if they have a similar shape and size and look, you’re going to be so much happier.
Use the Door for Storage
If you have a regular hinge door, they are a great place to put some extra stuff. A double hinge door is great. There are a few doors on closets that this won’t work with:
- A sliding door
- A pocket door
- A bold door
None of those doors are going to be really great for holding anything extra. On the door, you can have a door and wall rack with mesh baskets. You can store a steamer, hair accessories, tights, belts, socks, and cozy socks.
Design Considerations: The “Step-In” Closet
Closets are typically about 24 in deep. That is the distance between the front and the back of the closet that allows for a shelf and a rod and Hangers to hang across and the door to close. Hangers are usually between 16 and 17 in. Depending on where the Shelf is hanging, The Hanger can come out more or go more towards the rear of the closet. Then there are walk-in closets where you can actually walk into the closet and there is enough space on three walls of the closet to have Solution on either like two of the walls or three of the walls. There is a size in between that is annoying called the step in. It’s big enough to step into it but not big enough to have Solution on more than the back wall.
The moral of the story is that you can use that weird side space for storing stuff on hooks. Hooks are amazing. You can store hoodies on the hooks, a robe, and jewelry. It is not particularly wasted space.
Use All of the Vertical Space
Use all of the vertical space in your closet, as there’s a lot of space just being wasted. If you are lucky enough to have a high ceiling in your closet, then you are getting so much extra space for free. The average closet has just a shelf and a rod for clothes hanging underneath it, and if you have a shoe rack or something on the bottom just storing something really short, you’re missing an opportunity to store a lot more between the bottom of the clothes and the bottom of the closet.
Consider:
- Adding a dresser or drawers or some other shelving unit to take up that extra space between the floor and the bottom of your clothes.
- If you need more hanging space, you can definitely install a rod to get that double hang space.
Generally speaking, if you want to store items on that top shelf, you can get a lot more for your buck if you use stacking bins, stacking boxes, and/or stacking shelves just to store stuff that you’re not using very often.
Typically the stuff that’s out of your reach wants to be the least used stuff because you don’t want to have to get on a stool to get that stuff if you love it and you have to wear it on a daily basis.
Keep a step stool in your closet, especially if you’re short and you have high ceilings.
Closet Planning
If you’re planning out your closet, if it just has a shelf and a rod, measure your garments from the top of the hanger that the hangy part to the bottom of your garment. When designing a closet, it was somewhere between 30 in and 42 in depending on the height of the person.
You need to keep it into consideration if you’re considering using the space below your hanging garments for any kind of storage. There are things called nonfunctional shelves because there is a hanging rod that needs to be attached to a shelf in order for it to function. You can’t attach the hanging rod directly to any other structure.
Drawer Organization
If you have drawers in your closet, you have to treat your drawers like it’s Marbles and a jar. If you put a bunch of marbles in a jar, you’re never going to be able to get to the marble at the bottom without emptying the whole thing out. You want to treat your socks and smaller items underwear all that stuff the same way. The smaller the item is the shallower the drawer, and you want to keep a single layer.
Store things in the drawer relative to their size and bulk. Big bulky sweaters go in the big bulky deep drawer, little tiny cute socks shallow drawer, and a drawer organizer. File folding or vertical folding, having clothes be vertically folded as you open the drawer is very helpful.
Keeping clothes categorized in a way that works for you in your closet can be really helpful. For a visual person, keeping things color blocked is very helpful. You can subdivide categories after that if you want if it makes it easier to have all the red blouses in one place, but organizing by color is helpful.
The “Kind of Clean” Situation
For that kind of clean situation, when a shirt has been worn once and is not dirty, but also not clean, hang it up on a valet hook and let it air out overnight. After it’s aired out, if it doesn’t smell, if it’s not stained, it goes right back in the closet. It is helpful not to overthink it. All of us have this unintentional unconscious sort of inventory of how many times we’ve worn a garment and when it needs to be washed. If it’s smelly, if it’s stained, if it just looks Rank, then it’s time to take it to the dry cleaner or wash it.
Conclusion
These are the ultimate tips for organizing your closet. From decluttering and uniform hangers to strategic use of vertical space and drawer organizers, these steps will help you create a functional and joyful wardrobe space that works for you.
