Organizing Your Clothes Closet & Mentoring Our Younger Selves

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Vanessa Topic: Organizing Your Clothes Closet

Since we started the Edit and Forget Challenge, there are a couple of things that I’ve noticed:



A lot of folks love the idea of editing, but they’re having a tough time convincing their significant others to jump on board. So the biggest piece of advice we give them is to listen to Episode 11 With Joshua Becker of Becoming Minimalist, where he shares some tips on how to work with your loved ones.  Basically he recommends to start with your own stuff first.




I also noticed most folks start with editing their clothes. I guess it just seems like a natural place to start because most of us have our own clothes that we don’t share with anyone else.  I also think folks start in their closets because you can make a significant impact visually...letting go of 20 pieces of clothing frees up a lot more space than 20 pieces of paper or 20 paper clips.



Well one of the side effects to all this editing that we've encouraged, is that I've gotten a few questions about what to with the clothes that are left behind and how to organize these newly freed-up closets!


I’ve already talked about how to organize any space back in Episode 12 As a quick recap, I use a four step process: N...A...P...O

 - Determine your Needs
- Assess your space
- Edit your space
- Organize your space


For the folks out there who have already edited...I recommend going back to the previous two steps:  Decide if your NEEDS have changed....and Re-ASSESS your space to decide how you’ll now utilize it.


If you haven’t edited yet, then you may want to listen to Episode 12  to learn about my 4 step process before you start organizing your closet. Or go simplelifetogether.com/organizeanything to get access to my Organizing Series of blog posts.


Ech closet is different and each person has different needs for utilizing their closet.


 Here are some TIPS on how to organize your clothes closet:



Sort your clothes:


- By FUNCTION: work clothes, dress clothes, casual, seasonal
- By TYPE: t-shirts, polos, long sleeve, sweaters, pants, skirts, dresses, jackets
- By COLOR  use the colors of the rainbow as a guide when sorting your colors ROYGBIV...red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet (with white in front and black at the end)
- Or a COMBINATION.  For example, I sort by type and color within each type (sleeveless shirts from white to black)



 Dedicate space for each person.  After you edit and have a better idea of how many clothes you have left, you can better establish the space required for each person.




 Don’t get too hung up on hangers!  I prefer to use the same type of hanger to keep a streamlined look in the closet.  For example...I don’t like plastic tubular hangers with my non-slip felt ones.  But my felt hangers aren’t the easiest to use especially on cotton crew neck tee-shirt.  So here are some tips with hangers:


 - If you want a streamlined look but need to use different hangers...try using the felt hangers along with the clear plastic hangers like you get from a department store.  Both usually have a silver metal hook, which is mostly what you see as you look across the clothing rod.
- For heavy jackets and coats...use wood or thick, wide plastic hangers specifically made for sport coats, and blazers etc.
- To save space and/or prevent your clothes from sliding around, use the slimline/felt/flocked hangers.  I like these but because they are so thin they tend to break easily...not recommended for heavy coats and pants.  They work great however for spaghetti strap shirts and keeping light pants from sliding.
- For slacks and skirts....I find the clear plastic hangers with the metal hook and clips work best.