A Complete Guide to Organizing Your Closet

Cabinets are great because you can put all your junk in them, close the door, and that junk doesn’t even exist. Except for that, and eventually your toilets will overflow. If it’s time to clean up the clutter of your closet to find things to wear, we’ve got you covered.

What do you need

Collect everything you need before digging through the huge trash heap. You’ll need:

• A couple of garbage bags (maybe more depending on what you’re dealing with)
• Boxes for donating or selling certain items
• An hour or two of your time
• Maybe a friend can help you decide what to keep and what to throw away.

When you have everything ready in advance, it will be easier for you to get through it all. Be sure to bring a drink, listen to music, or download an audiobook. Collect everything you can so that the task does not seem tedious.

Step one: cleaning and sorting

Your best bet is to start from scratch and clean your entire cabinet of dirt. It’s easier. You will have a blank canvas to work with, which is easier than choosing on the go.

Take everything out of the closet and study each item one by one . Use the old “Donate, Ditch, Sell” method to figure things out. (Or, if you’re very lazy like me, set the method to “Donate and Discard.”) Put trash in trash bags, select a trash bin for anything you want to sell , and assign a storage bin to Goodwill. , The Salvation Army, or wherever you donate clothing and household items.

If you’re unsure of what to leave, here are some questions I’ll ask to make the process easier :

• Have I worn it in the last year? If not, then it will do. Of course, you may have some sentimental exceptions to this rule, and it’s up to you whether or not to hold onto objects. We’re not going to take you here Kondo , but if you’re having a hard time dealing with the clutter, you might want to reconsider your decision to hold onto things.
• What would I buy? Our editor Alan Henry suggested asking this question to break the clutter habit : “If my house burned down and I lost everything, what would I replace?” While he suggested asking this about anything you have in general, I find it helpful for clothing in particular. If it’s not exactly what I’m going to buy or wear now, I put it in one of three piles.
• Do I need to replace it? Maybe it’s a top with heavy sweat stains, or a really uncomfortable pair of heels, or just a crumbling cardigan. Make a list of the items you need to replace, and then dispose of the old items.

If you are indecisive, a friend or spouse may be useful. They can tell you directly what you should throw away. Once you have everything you want to keep, deal with the rest. Find out which items might still be valuable and which ones are better to donate, and then throw the rest into the toss pile.

Chances are, you also have a lot of junk that shouldn’t be in the closet to begin with. In my closet, you can find things that I don’t know what to do and which I don’t want to think about. Instead of putting all this junk back in your already tiny closet, see if there is a better place for it. For example, your documents and personal files. Can they fall into a drawer? Or better yet, can you digitize and shred them ? If you have special seasonal clothing that you don’t wear often, you can store it elsewhere. Rain boots can be in your living room or in your wardrobe, for example, if you have one. When winter is over, pack your coats and thick sweaters in these compact vacuum cubes and store them under your bed or in suitcases. Shoes can also be put under the bed.

However, you don’t want to clean your toilets just to clutter up another place. The idea is to come up with dedicated spaces for specific things so that your closet doesn’t become a place for everything.

After you have weeded out what is left, divide the remaining items into separate piles in advance: clothes, shoes, jewelry, underwear, socks, and so on. This way you can see how much you work versus how much real space you have in your closet.

Step two: if you have a small closet, make the most of it

If your closet is cramped, now while it is empty is the best time to make it a little more efficient. Here are some tips that might help.

Use door and wall space

Organizer for open shoes , hangers for upper garment and hangers purses inexpensive and take up too much space on the rear side of the cabinet door. They are too bulky in my opinion, so I use a few simple hooks to hang the cardigans that I wear a lot. You can also use more wall space. If you have a lot of scarves or bracelets, you can hang them on a towel rack on the wall (or on the back of your door). And I used these easy-to-remove Command hooks to hang necklaces and hats.

Hang your luggage or bags

If you keep suitcases, luggage, or large bags in your closet, you can stuff them with other items to use the space, but there’s another idea: hang them over your door. (or high on another wall where you don’t need to look at them). All you have to do is screw a sturdy hook to the wall and hang.

Add rod

If you have vertical space, you can install a second cabinet rod. Some cabinets only have one rod and lots of free space at the top and bottom (see photo above). It does take some DIY skill, but you can easily turn it into a cabinet with two fishing rods and still have plenty of storage space.

Here’s a video from Helpful DIY showing how it’s done. You will need cut-to-length wooden dowels, anchor hooks, and a pair of staples to support the rod. This doubles the available hanging area.

Get space-saving hangers

The right hangers can work wonders in your closet too. For instance:

• Cascading Hooks : Add hangers to hangers cascading down to use more vertical space. (You can also use the soda can tongues for this !) Some hangers even come with hooks built into them.
• Tiered Skirt Hangers : Similar to cascading hooks but for skirts. Several skirts can be hung on one hanger. They are also sewn for trousers .
• Shallow hangers : If you have little depth in your closet, you can save space by hanging a few shirts in a different direction.
• Super thin hangers : exactly what they look like. Very thin hangers that take up less space.

Containers can also help with small spaces. Whether it’s fancy storage boxes or just plain old shoeboxes, stuffing your belongings into the paddock makes them easier to find. You can fit more in cramped spaces and keep things organized.

Step three: choose an organization method

Once you’ve decided what is left and maximized your closet space, it’s time to fold it back. Before you do this, think a little. Your wardrobe will take up the bulk of your closet. How do you want your clothes to be organized so that they can be easily reached?

There are several ways to understand them. For instance:

• Occasional: You can separate your work clothes from your casual weekend wear. And party clothes can end up in the back of your closet, as you probably won’t need them as often as work clothes.
• By Dress Type: Most people probably choose this route because it suits just about everyone. You store pants in one section of your closet, blouses in another, T-shirts together, and so on.
• Seasonal: You can also categorize winter and summer clothes. Summer dresses go in one direction; sweaters in the other.

Your method can be a combination of all three of them. Personally, I sort by type of clothing and then organize by occasion.

Break the closet into “zones”

Also, it may seem overwhelming, but I also mark 4-5 “zones” in the closet. Zone 1 is the most accessible area where I store the things I wear the most, while zone 5 is the least accessible, usually the back of the toilet or a high shelf that I can’t get to.

Most of my wardrobe is T-shirts, casual tops and jeans, so they sit in the front of my closet in Zone 1. I also usually wear a cardigan every day. My everyday cardigans hang on my door, and my extras are in a separate area in front of my closet, in Zone 2 (I also store coats and jackets here in winter). I store dresses in Zone 3. in those days I want to look trendy and they can also be arranged in casual and cocktail dresses. By “organized” I just mean that casual front dresses are always available for everyday wear. In Zone 4, at the back of the closet, I have another compartment for trousers and blouses, clothes that I only wear if I need to meet with a client. In Zone 5, I store bags, luggage, and other items that I don’t often use (such as an air mattress).

Thanks to this method, it doesn’t take long to get dressed. I know exactly which section to choose from, depending on what I’m dressing for, and based on that, I have a limited number of options to choose from. It also helps that I have a small wardrobe , but order is very important.

Step four: simplify maintenance

Once everything is in place, you need to make sure it stays in place. A trash bag can help with this. Basically, it’s a bag that you keep in your closet to get rid of the trash all the time. From time to time I realize that I am ready to get rid of a piece of clothing. Instead of just promising to dispose of this particular item later, I’ll throw it in a dump bag to actually clean it up along the way. Professional organizer Keith Brown takes it one step further. She explains how her process works in Elle :

“I keep a shopping bag with a handle in front of the closet. Every time I try on clothes and then take them off again because they are unflattering, unsuitable, tight, dirty or inappropriate, I put them in my bag, ”says Brown. “If you take off a piece of clothing for any reason other than being dirty or not fit, that means it’s wrong and probably never will,” she says. When the bag is full, Isaacs explains, donate clothes or trade them with a friend at an exchange party.

This is a good rule of thumb for cleaning clothes , especially if you have a habit of storing things that you hate. If you try it on and hate it, you will probably always hate it, so you can save time and just get rid of it.

And then there are clothes that you just stop wearing. Here’s any easy way to get rid of them: Flip all the hangers back . When you take something off the hanger and put it on, then flip the hanger over. After about six months, you can easily see which clothes you are not wearing because their hangers will be turned backwards.

It’s also easy to forget about the things hanging in the closet. A friend’s dad taught me this trick: keep the hangers one finger apart. This way you can see all of your items at once, making dressing easier. Not all of us have closet space for this, but if you do, it’s also an easy way to make sure you don’t lose sight of certain items in your closet.

Finally, I try to follow the one-on-one rule. If I buy an item that I really don’t need, I will have to give up something else. It really helped me curb my impulsive clothing purchases and also kept my closet in check. To realize this, I keep the same number of hangers close at hand, instead of buying more (or stealing one from my husband). That way, if I buy something, there will be no hanger left for that unless I get rid of something else.

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