In part 1, I covered the first step of reclaiming your wardrobe – decluttering. Now comes the next step – organising what’s left!
1. Remove
Get started by looking at what’s in your wardrobe, and pulling out anything you only wear occasionally. This is any form of specialty clothing, such as ski gear. If at all possible, find somewhere else to store it. Personally I love the big flat plastic bins that slide under your bed. If you have a couple of old trunks or suitcases, you could even use them as a decorating feature in a room, while tucking away unnecessary clothing inside them!
2. Categorise
Next, group the clothes in your closet by type or use/function. Pile like clothing together on your bed, such as piles of trousers, jumpers, t-shirts etc. Then break each pile down even further if it’s appropriate, such as by season.
3. Preparing
Look at your empty wardrobe and think about the space you have available, and how you’ve used the wardrobe in the past. Are there parts of your wardrobe that are much easier for you access? That’s where you want to put the clothes you access frequently. Out-of-season clothing can go on the top shelf until it’s time to bring it out again, for example.
Do you already have some bits and pieces to help organise your clothes, such as a shoe rack, or hanging organiser? Have these worked for you in the past? Have there been items you always struggle to find? The idea of this exercise is to get a really good feel for the space, both in terms of how you can use it as effectively as possible, and ways of storing items that might work well in the available space.
As part of this step, you may identify the need for some extra storage items, such as a belt rack or shelf dividers to stop clothing piles melding into each other. Make a note of these. You can go and purchase them straight away, but only if it won’t stop you getting stuck back into the job at hand when you get home again!
4. Finishing the Job
Now that you have an idea of where everything needs to go, it’s time to start putting your clothes back into the wardrobe. Start by piling or hanging clothes in groups by type. If you really want to get organised, you can organise each group by colour or style as well.
If a group contains items that you only wear in certain seasons, such as coats, then if possible either store the out-of-season items in a separate location, or at least put the current season items towards the front. You can rotate locations as seasons change.
Remember to utilise spaces such as the back of closet doors for things like belts, scarves, ties or closet organisers. Use drawer dividers to help keep your smaller items like socks and lingerie separated and easy to find. Shoes can be placed in separate plastic containers, labelled and then stacked to fit more in and make them easy to locate.
5. Maintenance
Now you have an amazing wardrobe, where everything is neatly stored and easy to find, there comes a final step – keeping it that way! The secret to this step is small amounts often. Rather than allowing the wardrobe to get so massively out of control that it’s a huge effort to tidy it up, do small tidy ups regularly. Socks a mess? Tidy up the sock drawer. T-shirts a massive jumble? Pull them out, refold and organiser, replace them and if necessary add something like a divider to stop it happening again.
Life is so much easier when you can open your wardrobe, easily locate and grab what you want, and get on with your day. So remove the hassle of a messy wardrobe from your life by following these easy steps to reclaim your wardrobe now!
