Last week I was lucky to take part in a hugely enjoyable team organizing project, tackling the closet of the winner of the Bay Area’s Messiest Closet contest. With two others from my local chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers, we swooped in to help the owner sort and purge several years worth of clothing and clutter surprises:
 Before |
 After |
Here are some of the closet tips we passed along to the winner:
- Are you a hanger or a folder? Try to arrange your closet so there is capacity for the method you prefer.
- Put hangers the wrong way round, and fix them when you wear something. After a few months, you’ll see what you never wear.
- Keep a donation bag in your closet, for instant decisions.
- Your closet shouldn’t hold stuff other than clothes, shoes, accessories.
- Take your clothes out of plastic when they come back from the dry cleaners – moisture gets trapped too easily in plastic.
- Can you label different family members’ clothing to make sorting laundry easier? Initials or dots are possibilities.
- Multi-layer hangers are tricky to use and may result in you not bothering to hang things up: just stick with singles.
- Black velvet hangers are skinny, but grip clothes really well. Wooden are lovely, but do take up more room.
- If you can treat yourself to matching hangers (always buy far more than you think you need!), your closet will immediately look much better.
- Can you live with one-in, one-out? In other words, when you buy something new, what will you let go?
What’s the strangest thing in your closet? And what are your favorite closet tips and tricks?
If you’re in the SF Bay Area and would like friendly, confidential Professional Organizing help to turn chaos into calm, contact me to take the first step toward a sorted, stylish space.
Wish I did live close enough for closet organisation from you! Great ideas and I love the ‘keep a donation bag in your wardrobe’ one. I have some hooks on the back of the wardrobe door and I hang my scarves from them – I can see at a glance what I have and pick one to wear that day. x
All great tips – now to apply them! Would be afraid you’d faint away in shock if you peeked into my closet…needs a lot of help.
xo Cathy
I am such a folder! For some reason, I always thought that was frowned upon.Woo Hoo, it is allowed.
Number 4 is always the one that trips me up. Often the only real place for accessible storage is the closet, so everything ends up there. (Thankfully, don’t have that problem currently)
It really is amazing how much more organized a closet looks with matching hangers. Such a small thing to do with such great results!
Looks much better after you’ve come to the rescure, doesn’t it. My own closet used to look like picture number one – until I had it built out and put in sliding doors and drawers (and chucked out everything I hadn’t used for a year or two). 4 months since I had it done, and my closet is still as tidy as the first day. Now, I’m in closet heaven.
Though I typically think of myself as a good organizer, the sad truth is that I tend to hold on to clothes far too long, and have plenty of clothes in the closet that I never, ever wear. I let myself get away with all of that hypothetical thinking… “What if I need an XX for YY??”
The one-in/one-out approach is what I aspire to, and for a while was doing well with it on shoes, but I’ve kind of lapsed.
Now I’m most proud that I’ve gotten a lot better at returning things. When I buy or order new things, I hang them in the front of the closet where they’re visible, and if I don’t wear them within two or three weeks, back they go. I find this far more effective than when I used to hang new items where they would permanently live, and then promptly proceed to forget about them. I’ve probably returned half the stuff I’ve bought in the last year, and the result is far fewer things going in the donation bin!
xoxo,
tanja
I like the one about turning the hanger the other way.
Great tips. My closet is small but packed. I do find that the old adage holds true; I only use 20% of my things 80% of the time.