Editor’s note: Don’t forget the closet challenge! The winner will receive a $50 Amex gift card. Contest details are here, and the deadline for submission is Monday at 5 p.m. Pacific.
Now that you’ve done an initial purge of your closet you can start fine-tuning the arrangement.
First, we’re going to sort the closet for easier use. You may think this idea is a little bit obsessive, but I promise it will make your life easier.
First sort your clothes by type, and then by color. When you do this, getting dressed will be a breeze. You can easily find the pieces you are looking for, and making new outfits becomes easier. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now and it really works.
I have mixed in my jackets and shirts together because that works well for me in a small space, but if you have a larger closet you may want to separate them.
The other bonus to this system is when doing laundry. You will find clothes easily going into their “slots” with a waiting hanger. No need to cram them into the closet or search for an available hanger (as a matter of fact, you should have plenty of extra hangers now!).
Next we are going to set up a secondary purge system in the closet. We all have clothes we think we’ll wear, or we paid a lot of money for, or we consider them “investment” pieces (even though they don’t fit). This tip is going to help you sort through those items.
If you have worn an item in the last 2 weeks, you can leave the hanger as is. If you have not worn it in the last 2 weeks, turn it so the hanger hooks to the closet rod from the back.
This will make it slightly more difficult for you to remove it, but it will also alert you which clothes you are not actually wearing. Once you wear the item, turn the hanger around to the front. After 3 months (or whatever time period you determine), the clothes that are still hanging backward are clothes you should consider donating.
Last, color-sort your folded clothes and stack them neatly.
For those that have not been worn in the last 2 weeks, turn them backward so you can determine if you are really wearing them over time.
It should take less than 30 minutes to do all of this, and maintenance is easy because it is visually organized. Take the time to do this, even if you haven’t done the initial purge in Part 1, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much easier it is to get dressed in the morning and manage your clothes.
Click here for How to Declutter Your Closet, Part 1
To get links to all of this month’s decluttering articles, click here.
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Betsy Talbot writes about carving the lifestyle you want out of life you already have. When she’s not writing, she’s paring down, saving up, and getting ready for a year of travel with her husband.
About Betsy
Those rules of 3 weeks or 3 months don’t work for me because I wear completely different clothes depending on the season. That’s why even the 1 year rule doesn’t work. Plenty of times I’ve gone a winter without wearing something, only to wear it often the following year.
I understand that – I live in a climate where there isn’t a huge swing in temps, so a lot of my clothes I can wear year-round. Not so when I lived in New Mexico, where the temp can fluctuate from freezing to scorching in the same day.
The timelines you set are up to you, as is the decision. If you set a timeline of 6 months and you evaluate something you haven’t worn but think you likely will, then of course you would keep it. The main goal is to remind you of what you are wearing and what you are not because so many times we keep things in our closet without really thinking about it. It should be an active decision to keep it, not a passive activity to allow everything that makes its way into your closet the right to stay there.
This activity is probably easier for people who rotate their clothes out depending on season, but I don’t have much experience with that. We have limited space and purposefully small wardrobes, so our clothes are out year-round. Does anyone here rotate clothes each season?