Top 10 Tips to Maintain an Organized Closet
Want to feel successful today? Organize your closet!
Do you know the process?
Sort like items together
Purge unwanted items
Assign a home for each type of item
Contain with products if needed.
Maintain the space with the do it now principle
You can complete this project in one day, from start to finish. Now here are 10 tips to keep you feeling that organizing success.
Top 10 Tips to Maintain your closet once it’s organized.
- Don’t purchase organizing products before you have sorted, purged, and assigned them.
- Don’t store anything in your closet that is not clothing or accessories.
- Think of the closet as three separate spaces: shelves, hanging space, and floor.
- Turn hangers around in the Spring and Fall to see what you wear.
- Use all similar types of hangers. Never wire hangers.
- Store empty hangers together, Not mixed in with clothes.
- Use the One-In/One-Out Rule: for every item, you bring into the closet, take one out.
- Remember the 80/20 Rule. 80% of your clothing, you use 20% of the time.
- Do It Now Principle: If it will take less than 2 minutes to do, don’t put it off.
- Keep only what fits, is useful, in style, needs no repairs and you especially love.
Top 10 Tips to Maintain an Organized Closet Click To Tweet
In conclusion, an organized closet isn’t the be-all-end-all, but it can spark the organizing genius in you.
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Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
These are great tips for organizing your closet. It is possible to get it done in a day, unless you are overwhelmed by that idea. For my clients who are easily stopped in their tracks by overwhelm, I suggest breaking it down into a series of small tasks. It may take them a week or more to complete but the result is the same!
That’s a good option. I break the task down, as mentioned in the post, by shelves, hanging and floor.
I was just talking about hangers with my Mom. She wanted a suggestion for my birthday, which is a long way off, but I got to thinking that it might be nice to have a new set of hangers. I help clients get them, but I never seem to get around to my own. Now I have the fun of deciding which kind I want. The very thought of matching hangers is making me happy!!
Awe! How sweet. We never treat ourselves. I have white plastic hanger, bought long before I’d ever seen felt hangers. The work for me and it makes a HUGE difference when you have all the same kind of hanger. Enjoy!
Ahhh. The joy of matching hangers! It’s incredible what a visual difference it makes in a closet. Plus it creates easier access. These days, I think the 80/20 rule is more like 90/10 in my closet. With the pandemic, many of the clothes I wore more regularly (like business or conference attire,) I rarely wear. I miss wearing those things, but I’m not ready to let them go. I have space for them and figure that at some point in the not too distant future, I will use them again. But if I don’t, at some point I’ll need to start asking myself some questions like, “Do you wear it?”
I guess all of this speaks to the point that it’s always worth re-evaluating from time to time because things change.
I’m with you Linda. I have evaluated what’s in my closet several times in the last two years. I’ve donated a lot of my “nicer” clothes because I don’t think I’m going to ever be wearing as much as I did in the place. I decided to keep one or two nice things in each clothing category (2 nice skirts, 2 nice dresses, etc.). I’ve really pared down.
You definitely hit all of the essentials. Like Seana mentioned above, I like having matching hangers (and, I agree with you and Joan Crawford — No more wire hangers!). For my purposes, I vastly prefer plastic tubular hangers to the velveteen kind because I prefer things to have less friction against the item. The only one of your rules I don’t follow is turning hangers around. Perhaps it’s because the upper bar in my closet is already very hard for me to reach, but the idea of turning the hangers around makes me cranky; I’d have to stand on a step-ladder to turn them around and then turn them back again. #10 is tough, though, as I haven’t worn anything but jeans & T’s (or jeans and sweaters) for the two years of the pandemic. Oh, how I long to wear a little black dress and pinch-y high heels! 😉
I have the same White hangers and prefer them like you. They do make a closet so much more orderly. I turned my hanger recently to really see what I wear. Like you, I’m much more casual these days. I still have a few nicer/dressier clothes, but not nearly as many. I don’t think I’ll be dressing up as much as I used to. I have a huge pile of clothing to donate once I’m done with the hanger swap exercise.
Thanks for another great blog Janet and necessary blog, I too have been slowly purging as my lifestyle heading into my 64th year is changing so much. We need to realize and recognize when a change is in order. Great tips!
Oh yes Lisa!
I’m entering a new decade in April. I don’t know if that is what’s making me purge my closet or the lifestyle change of the pandemic.