Sorting and Organizing your Clothes

What do you need from your closet?

• What space do you have between your closet, wardrobe, dresser, under-bed, etc. Where do you WANT to store clothes, and what is available to you?
• Do you have special needs for your clothes? Do certain things need to be hung up and not folded? Are there shoes that don't fit in boxes?
• Do you need to keep pets away from your clothes? Do you have cats that tend to claw on hanging clothes or sleep in the closet and leave behind a bed of fur?
• Do you need to share storage space with blankets, pillows, towels, memorabilia, or other stored items?

What you might need

1. If you have a large collection of "career clothes," you may want to sort them by color instead of item, so you can quickly find matching outfits.
2. If you have a lot of shoes, belts, ties, or bags, displaying and keeping the ones you love and use will need to be an important part of your system.
3. If you are sharing a closet with your mate, you may need a visual or physical divider.
4. If you have a shallow closet with bi-fold doors, you may benefit from a shelf above a rod, both of which span the length of the closet, and a set or plastic or wood drawers that sit beneath the rod, or hanging shelves like seen in my pictures.
5. If you don't have a closet, you may need special drawer organizers for your dresser, a hanging wardrobe for things that absolutely must be hung up, and under-bed boxes with casters for easy access to shoes and winter items.
6. If you have a tiny room or studio apartment, you might want great, colorful systems that can be left out in the open.

The sorting and organizing process

• Pull it all out.
  I find that laying things on the bed keeps them clean, off the floor, and in ONE pile you can pick from.
• Gather your supplies.
  As you sort through clothes you're bound to find stuff that's just plain trash, stuff that you want to give to a certain person, and stuff you just want to get rid of altogether. Have a trash bag handy and several boxes or brown paper bags available for donation piles. You can also create a pile of clothes that need to be mended or altered, providing you really intend to fix them. If your bed is covered in clothes, you'll also need a clean table or box in which to put clothes you're keeping, so you can put them back on the bed later for folding and hanging.
• Try everything on.
  Movie on? Snacks read? Drink prepared? Starting with one piece at a time, try on each article of clothing. Does it fit? Does it feel good? Does it look good? Do you like it? If so, it's a keeper. If not, decide what to do with it. Will altering it help (and will you really get around to altering it)? Should it go to someone else? Should it be donated or go to a garage sale? Decide what to do with it and put it in the appropriate pile. Avoid putting things back to make decisions on later.
• Divide and conquer.
  All done? Congrats! That was a big task! Before you can sleep in your bed you need to clear it off. Hang up everything you want to be hung up, fold clothes that will go in drawers and on shelves. Take a look at what you have so you can decide what and how much you need in the way of an organizational system.
• Plan your space.
  Plan your organization system based on what you have. If you have big bulky sweaters that will be folded, you'll need deeper drawers or taller shelves. If you only have a few things that must be hung up, look for a system that incorporates more shelves and drawers and less rod space.

More systems to consider

• A dresser.
  You may already have one, or check garage sales and Goodwill for a nice one to refurbish.
• The closet rod.
  This can easily be set at any height (or many at multiple heights), and is cheap to buy and install.
• Shelves.
  Even a simple set of shelves, or one above the clothes rod, can add a huge amount of storage to otherwise unusable spaces.
• Shoe boxes.
  Plastic shoe boxes that stack are perfect for more than just shoes. Use them to stash belts, swimsuits, mittens, and costume jewelry.
• Tie racks, belt racks, shoe racks.
  There is no end to the designs and styles of these handy gadgets.

The short list for getting organized

1. Take everything out of the space.
   Take everything out of your entire closet or dresser, but not both at once. Work with one CLEAR space at a time.
2. Decide what purpose the space will have.
   For a long time I picked up stuff and put it wherever I could find a home for it, instead of deciding what purpose spaces should have, and putting things away accordingly. I recommend the latter.
3. Get appropriate organizational systems.
   Appropriate means they fit the space, they fit your style, they fit your budget, and they fit what they will hold. More on this later.
4. Clean, sort, and organize what you have.
   Make sure everything you put back is stuff you're keeping, and is clean and in good repair.
5. Put your stuff back into the space.
   But only what you want to keep and what you want in the space.
6. Enjoy!
   Yay, you're done, and you have a clean space that, if organized correctly, will STAY clean!