Your best bet for successful closet organization is conducting a complete purge. Sort all items into categories such as keep, donate, discard, and sell to create a fresh start with an empty closet space.
Once you’ve reduced your wardrobe to just the essential pieces, try some of these straightforward closet organization strategies to give it even greater appeal.
1. Label Your Clothes
If you prefer visual organizing methods, try sorting your wardrobe by color (in rainbow order!) so it is easier for you to quickly locate what you’re searching for. Consider purchasing matching hangers to give the closet an instantly professional appearance.
Once you’ve sorted through your clothing, place everything that remains back into your closet or drawers using bins or baskets to group like items together—for instance, boots with boots, tees with tees, and skirts with skirts.
Create Zones. A great way to organize your wardrobe is by creating zones. This technique will make getting ready in the morning much simpler by organizing everything into categories you can easily access—for instance, shirts by sleeve length can be placed together, while dresses should be hung from specific parts of your closet rod.
If you own an abundance of accessories, storage cubes will keep them all organized and easily accessible. Or invest in chic etageres or floating shelves to show off bags, shoes, and hats.
2. Put Like Items Together
As part of your closet or drawer organization process, it’s crucial that like items be separated. Separating sweaters from jeans and T-shirts from pants will help you identify exactly which pieces exist and help determine which are a good match with your wardrobe.
This tip applies to every area of the home and office, from clothing to kitchen utensils. Bins or closet dividers may help organize like items together; however, prioritizing eliminating unnecessary items is key in order to successfully organize a wardrobe.
Once you’ve gone through the Let Go and Sort steps, it’s time to put your organizational skills to the test. “A place for everything and everything in its place” encapsulates this step perfectly—now just stay organized by following our next blog series on how best to maintain this newly acquired state!
3. Create Zones
Your closet is one of the only rooms in your home dedicated exclusively to you, yet it can often become neglected. Transforming it into an effective wardrobe that supports your lifestyle and boosts your confidence takes careful planning—that’s where closet zones come in! These small areas within your closet that organize clothes based on their purpose or how you wear them help reduce decision fatigue when getting dressed, since only items that fit with your current mood or occasion will appear. For instance, the work zone might contain all your comfortable blouses and pants, while the date night zone might include your chicest pieces!
To maximize the effectiveness of this system, utilize closet dividers to keep clothes neatly folded, matching hangers to maximize space utilization and offer a uniform look, and storage solutions such as bins, drawers, or shelving to hold all your belongings without taking up valuable floor space. Label each zone so it is clear how best to organize and maintain it, and label every zone so any person who uses your closet knows exactly how they can organize and maintain it.
4. Don’t Forget Shoes
As you organize your wardrobe, it is vital not to overlook shoes when making decisions on organization. Doing so could cause chaos within the closet and result in shoe pairs tangling on the floor; for better organization, invest in a shoe rack or stackable bins to store your pairs off of the ground and off of your floor!
You could organize your shoes by color (remember ROY G. BIV!), season, or both—for instance, Sumner Canfield, our Director of Product Development, keeps her short-sleeve shirts together so she can quickly grab one on a warm day.
If you want a quick way to organize your shoes without spending hours doing it, clear risers or stacking bins can help create the appearance of boutique-style displays on shelves. Make sure to rotate these with seasonal wardrobe changes so they’ll still look their best come fall/winter; that way, Monday morning won’t leave you scrambling around your closet looking for suitable sneakers to quickly slip on before leaving for work!
5. Invest in a Closet Organizer
Install a custom closet system complete with adjustable shelves, hanging space, drawers, and more to maximize your wardrobe’s potential. Custom storage solutions also enhance the aesthetic of your home and increase perceived value—something future buyers could take notice of as they look around!
Make outfit-building quick and easy each morning by labeling existing hangers with rack tags or purchasing colored labeled hangers that feature easy color-coding schemes, such as dresses on blue hangers and skirts on white ones for quick outfit-building glances in the morning.
For your shoes and accessories, try stackable storage bins, an over-the-door shoe organizer, or a clear acrylic purse organizer that adds boutique charm. Don’t forget shelf dividers to prevent items from colliding with each other, or hang small items like scarves and hats on a rack to save shelf space; shallow drawers also make finding what you need easier when searching through piles of clothes—keep up with regular wardrobe organizing sessions so your items never end up disorganized again. The key to successful wardrobe organization is maintaining it regularly so you never end up with jumbled, mismatched items again.
