Closet Designs: declutter your wardrobe and find your clothes again

What do you need from your clothes closet? Funny question, eh. But when you think about what your clothes closet is supposed to do, you can get a head start on organizing it so that it actually does the job. So, what does the ideal wardrobe do? It can…

• Store your clothing in one convenient location
• Keep the rest of the room clothing-clutter-free
• Protect your clothes
• Save time and stress by displaying clothing for easy choice when dressing
• Save work by storing clothes wrinkle-free and clean
• Provide a relaxing, peaceful bedroom atmosphere

Does your clothes closet do its job for you?

Or does it come up short in some (or many!) areas?

The #1 reason why a clothes closet doesn’t do its job is that it’s too full. An over-full closet is inconvenient, you can’t get things out without disturbing other things, you can’t find things, it overflows into the rest of the room, clothes get wrinkled and even damaged from being packed in too tight, and you can’t see what you’ve got when you come to dress.

How to declutter your clothes closet

If your closet is over-stuffed, you need to declutter it to get rid of some of the extras. Check for these decluttering candidates:

• Worn out, ripped or stained clothes and shoes (you only need a few for washing the car and gardening!)
• Clothes now out of fashion (and you hope will never be back “in”!)
• Items which don’t fit (even if you get back to that size, will you still want to wear those clothes?)
• Things you wore once and found you didn’t like
• Things which don’t go with anything else
• Items which you haven’t worn in more than a year and are never likely to wear again
• Non-clothes: where else could they be stored?

Sometimes simply getting rid of the obvious clutter frees up enough space that we can go on and organize, but usually we need to dig deeper. Often, too, getting rid of just a few things doesn’t solve the long-term problem and we’re back where we started within a few months.

Finding a long term clutter solution

A long term solution takes more effort and more thought, and sometimes we need a bit of help. Getting a friend or family member to come and help is a good way to improve our motivation for getting rid of stuff, but does have drawbacks. An even better way is to work on ourselves from the inside out so that we can a) let go of the things which are cluttering up our lives, and b) stop bringing more clutter in! There are several online books and resources available to help – check these out and see which would suit you best:

• Clutter-Free Forever eBook
• Clear Your Clutter, Clear Your Mind
• Declutter FAST!
• Declutter Your Home

Closet Designs for Better Organization

As with so many organizing projects, the key here is “a place for everything and everything in its place”. Now you’ve decluttered your closet so that it contains only clothes, and only those which you actually wear, you stand a chance of having a place for everything.

Here are some ideas for storage options for various different clothing items:

• Coats: if they must be here rather than in the hall or mudroom closet, they could be hung on hangers on a full-height rod, on hooks on the back of the closet door, folded on a shelf.
• Jackets: as for coats except that they may only need a half-height rod
• Sweaters: need to be stored flat. Could be on shelves, pullout shelves, in drawers, in a hanging fabric shelf unit, or in boxes (card or plastic).
• Skirts: usually hung using a skirt hanger with clamps of some kind. Some hangers will hold several skirts stacked on the same hanger. Depending on the length of the skirt, you may need a full-height or half-height rod.
• Pants: Hung using a clamp-type hanger (on a full-height rod) or over a hanger bar (on a half-height rod). Don’t hang pants over the bar of a wire hanger as the crease will be very obvious later. Make sure that the front and back creases are correct and straight when you hang over a bar.
• Jeans: can be hung like pants, but also rolled or folded and stored like sweaters.
• Suits: you can hang the whole suit on one sturdy, well-shaped hanger with a bar, or on separate hangers, but suits always need to be hung up. A half-height rod is usually enough space.
• Dresses: almost all need to be hung, usually on a full-height rod. Delicate fabrics should be hung on a padded hanger.
• Shirts or blouses: are sometimes folded and stacked like sweaters, but for minimum creasing they should be hung on a shaped hanger. A half-height rod is normally enough.
• t-shirts and polo tops: can be hung if you have plenty of rid space but are usually folded and stored like sweaters.
• Underwear: drawers or boxes are usually best for these. Delicate undies need storage space which is smooth and well-finished so they don’t catch.  Usually stored by type, but you can also store by usage – all the everyday things in one drawer, and the special-use ones in another.
• Shoes and boots: shelves, cubbies or boxes work well.

Here are some home organization tools that can help with closet designs.