A Place for Everything and Everything in Its Place

A closet needs an efficient system in order to function competently and remain organized. Your system can be as simple or sophisticated as you like but the universal characteristic in all closet organization is to have a place for everything within easy reach. Once this goal has been attained, the next step to master is putting everything in its place. This has to be done in a consistent manner to make your system work efficiently. With time, some practice, and a little self-discipline, this can be realized quite handily.

Before beginning to organize your closet, you will need to assess your useable space and your organizing goals. Is there enough room for everything that you own and, more importantly, will you use it? If the honest answer to these two questions is yes, then you can bypass having to purge and sort the contents of your closet. However, if you are like most people, there may be many abandoned items in your closet – uncomfortable shoes or those skinny jeans that you hope to fit into one day – all that can and should go. So before you begin this mission, decide if you need to just organize or if a serious four-alarm de-cluttering campaign is necessary.

For example, if the bottom of your closet is a mass of unmatched shoes and you have to form a search party to hunt down a matching pair – you should find a home for every pair of shoes you own. This will probably mean investing in some type of shoe management system – a shoe tree or something similar. Before you go out and spend any money, do some practical research – find out what is available in your budget range and where you can find it at. Make sure that there is enough room for your entire shoe collection and be forward thinking – leave room for future growth. If you don’t follow this concept you’ll end up in the same situation as before but with less money in your wallet.

The next step is to decide how you want to organize the rest of your closet. The possibilities are numerous and you need to find a cost-effective system that works for you because organizing is all about making life easier. Some suggestions for different closet systems are to sort your clothes by items – group all of the pants together, shirts, sweaters, skirts, and so on; sort by occasion – work, around the house, gym, evening, or other types of clothing you own; or sort by color – you can use several of these ideas combined into one super-organizing plan.

After you have found a home for all of your clothes (or shoes) take the time (each and every time) to put them back in their new spot. But don’t stop at just your shoes! Keep going, pick the next problem spot in your closet, you will know what it is by the level of frustration you experience as you try to find something. It could be belts, ties, workout clothes, socks, whatever it is – find a permanent home for your items. After a couple of weeks of sticking with your new closet management system (whatever one you decide works for you), it will be second nature to put your clothes back where they belong and it will become second nature and you will never have to conduct an “all hands on deck” search in your closet again.

Tags: Clothing, Organization, Organizing, Personal Organization, Storage

Category: Healthy Environment