My wife and I share a closet – much to her chagrin – and while my half is only half-full of shorts, pants, dress shirts and t-shirts, hers has always been a colorful mosaic of every type of clothing one can own, some for which I don’t even know the name. Finally, after five years of dealing with the mess, I told her we were going to organize our clothes closet. It took about two days of arguing, bickering, tug-of-war and good-natured name calling, but eventually we got the job done.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Throw Out the Hangers You Hate
One of my biggest pet peeves about the clothes closet is the hangers – I hate the wire ones that always bend and fall apart. To make the clothes closet clean-up less painful, my wife and I went to Walmart and bought hangers to match the ones we do like. Now, even if our clothes closet is messy, at least the hangers match and are durable enough to last a few decades.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Empty It Out
Sometimes you don’t even realize how much of a black hole your clothes closet really is until you empty it completely. When we took everything out of our clothes closet at home, we found skirts and dresses that my wife hadn’t worn since 1993, shoved between other clothes on hangers.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Bulky Jackets Go Elsewhere
One of the things that made our clothes closet seem so messy was the excess of bulky winter jackets and coats. Instead of letting them ruin our clothes closet, we delegated them to the hallway closet. That also makes it easier in the winter when you need to leave in a hurry – it’s faster to run to the hallway closet than all the way back to the bedroom.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: The Good Will Pile
Rather than just tossing the clothes that don’t fit or which you will never wear again, make a separate pile for Good Will or another charity that accepts clothing. Load them all into plastic garbage bags and make an appointment to either have them picked up or to drop them off.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Shoes
My wife has a thing for shoes, and I have to admit that I have several pairs myself. Rather than cluttering the floor of our clothes closet with footwear, we purchased an inexpensive shoe rack. It hangs on the back wall of the closet and has slots for up to forty pairs of shoes. It keeps them organized and out of the way.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Belts
For the longest time, I tossed by belts on the floor amongst the montage of shoes, but we found a better way to store our belts. Hang an inexpensive metal or wood rack on the wall of your closet and hang the belts there. Or, you can hang them from a hanger with all of your clothes.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Winter/Summer
Texas only consists of two seasons – winter and summer – so we have only two ways to divide our clothes. Rotate your hangers so that the clothes for the current season are in front, while the rest hang in back. This will save time in the morning and keep you more organized.
Organizing Your Clothes Closet: Overhead Storage
My wife has an entire collection of clothes which she believes will eventually come back into style. For five years, they hung on hangers with the rest of the clothes, and she had to thumb past those to find clothing every morning. We weeded out all of those pieces of clothing and stored them in boxes in overhead storage racks. This is also a good place to store Christmas decorations, holiday clothes, Halloween costumes and other things that you won’t use very often.
