Home Organization - Closet Organization
Organize a Small Closet
Here's what you got -- a big jumbled mess of mismatched shoes and purses all over the floor, dry cleaning bags sticking out all over the place and clothes needing to be dry cleaned because of being crumpled. You wanted the purple dress, but grabbed the skirt from three years ago. And those shoes - they were purchased as a pair, right? Getting dressed in the morning has become a scavenger hunt through the closet, with the only prize being leaving the house fully dressed. It's hard enough to organize any closet, but smaller closets are infamously messy, squashed, and disorganized.
Steps to Organize a Small Closet
It is a very simple process to go from a closet disaster to closet dream come true with the proper plan. The steps in this plan are to evaluate the cause of the disorganization, purge the closet, and then place everything back organized. Once it is set-up, it will work so well it will never have to do this again.
Evaluate the Closet
The first step is to open the closet and look to determine the cause for the closet being disorganized. It needs to be determined whether it is the closet itself not being structurally laid out correctly or the lack of a system for organizing and maintaining your clothes. Is there enough shoe space, hanging space, drawer space, and shelf space. If the answer is yes, then move on to step two. If the answer is no, then there needs to be actual structural closet changes to be made. See Closet Designing: The Planning Process and Closet Designing: The Design Process.
Purge the Closet
The second step is to put ensure that everything that is in the closet belongs in the closet. You will need a couple of large garbage bags, a laundry basket, and non-wire matching hangers. Take everything out of the closet and separate into three piles: damaged and won't fit, pieces that need minor repairs, and pieces you wear regularly and feel good in.
Take the first pile and put into garbage bags and remove from the house immediately. Examine items from the second pile and place in the laundry basket (these are items that are missing buttons or have other minor defects). Create a deadline for the repairs, or else let it go with the first pile.
Organize the Clothes in the Closet
The more you can keep like items together, the easier it will be for you to find items when you need them, and the easier it will be to maintain the system. For the keepers, separate by type: sleeveless, short sleeve, long sleeve, sweaters and jackets, skirts, pants, and special occasion. When that is done, place the items on hangers that need to be hung, and then fold the rest. (Keep in mind that one of the goals will be to keep like items together, so don't just fold some short sleeves and hang the others, choose to either hang them all or fold them all.)
Next arrange each category by color: white/cream, pink/red, orange, yellow,green, blue, purple, brown, black, and gray. (If it is multicolor, hang it in the color section that is thought of first when you look at that particular article of clothing.) This will make it easier to find the type of clothing and then the color, that you want.
Organize Everything Else in the Closet
- Accessories like socks, bras, underwear, bras, and ties can go in drawers or stacking plastic bins with separate dividers.
- Over the door shoe organizers are a great option to store accessories and purses.
- For shoes, go through the same process of purging that was done with the clothing. The shoes that are being kept should be placed in clear plastic shoe boxes.
Now everything is done and it should be easier to find what is needed and to keep it that way.
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