Tips and tricks on organizing your closet.
This post contains affiliate links. That means if you click on any links, sales made through such links will reward me with a small commission – at no extra cost to you. I only promote companies or products I personally use or believe in.
Welcome back! I am so sorry I have been a bit MIA lately, I’ll get into that in a second. So to recap, I will now be posting about once a week. If you read my White Chocolate Strawberry Rose’ Madeleines then you will know I have had to cut down since we will be moving soon, actually, a lot sooner than we had anticipated. After my last post French Breakfast Puffs I put our home for sale by owner on Facebook and Nextdoor. To my surprise, we had an offer just 4 days later and that is the reason for my absence. Since I am the person handling everything I am much more busy than usual, especially since now we are packing. Anyway, I’ll save the “for sale by owner”
details for another post! On the subject of moving, I thought it was time to do a post on how to organize your closet. These are my personal experiences and I have some tips and tricks to help you get rid of items you may be holding on to from 10 years ago that literally sit in the back of your closet collecting dust!
Moving is never usually a fun thing to do but life happens and in order to go with the flow, you have to move. As I have mentioned in many of my posts like My Favorite Space Saver For Shoes, we live in a townhome and it is a bit tight at times. We love our little townhouse but we accidentally stumbled across a new place that seems to check more of the boxes than our current home does. I have worked very hard in getting our current home up to par with how I like things organized but there comes a point when it is time to move on. I cannot tell you how often I am reorganizing something in my home not just because of small spaces but I like to do a bit of “spring cleaning” a couple of times a year. If you have ever moved then you know after a few years you start to collect things and at some point, these “things” wind up taking up valuable space! Whether it be clothes, kitchen gadgets, electronics, or toys (if you have kids) there comes a point when you need to clean out, and moving always pushes you to get rid of the “things”. I always try to keep up with my home and get rid of the clutter so today I am going to share my process of organizing your closet, which in turn can really help organize your entire home!
How to organize your closet
Take a good hard look at the space that you have. If you are organizing a bedroom closet most homes have wire shelving or built-ins, if you are in a brand new home or renovating this is a good time to look at the empty canvas and figure out where you want to take the space.
If you are starting completely from scratch and plan on putting up built-ins and would like the bedroom closet to really fit your needs I recommend consulting a closet company. The closet company rep will help you understand the “empty canvas” better and help you figure out how you can maximize the space for your needs. If you are super handy you could have a consultation (free of charge) and get their plans of what they would do and you could essentially purchase cheaper items from your local hardware store to create the closet yourself. I personally have not done this, my homes have usually come with a closet or I have hired a professional to do the handy work. If you have the option of creating something from the lovely blank canvas make sure to measure the space properly. Measure the walls from side to side, top to bottom, and figure out exactly how much space you are working with. Take into consideration that your closet may not be able to accommodate closet hanging on both sides, this is why I use a professional.
If you have preexisting shelving/built-ins then take a look at what you have going on. When I moved into our current townhome they had the built-ins in already, the layout of the bedroom is pretty large but could have been better as they really could have given more closet space this is where I had to get creative. When you walk into my closet in front of you is my part of the closet, that is all on the right. The sort of central area is a mix of my items and his of more formal wear or longer hanging. On the opposite wall, I have a small chest of drawers to accommodate for the lack of a closet. My husband’s side is tucked behind the door which really sucks for him but he doesn’t mind it. As the person who is always putting items away, he was okay with taking the side behind the door and me having the other side. When we first moved in there was absolutely NO long hanging. I knew right off the bat that I was going to need to take out the middle shelf to make the closet the way I wanted for it to fit my needs. The closet is probably not wide enough to accommodate hanging on the opposite wall of my hanging so instead of a tight closet I opted for a small dresser.
Organizing your space will be different than how I have done mine. You need to take a look at what you currently have and base where you put items off of that. Here’s how I organized my closet. If you look at my side of the closet I have organized it by color having short and sleeveless items on the bottom while keeping long sleeves, sweaters, and hoodies up top, also by color. I went by color on my side because then I can quickly find exactly what I am looking for. If you have a lot of tunics, dresses, gowns, suits, or jumpers you will need some long hanging like I did, as you can see I left space on the bottom of my long hanging for some of my less-used shoes or shoes that wouldn’t fit in my shoe cabinet downstairs.
My husband’s side is organized differently as I wanted to organize by his needs. He is a huge lover of just about all things sports so half of his closet is jerseys and sports team t-shirts, the other half is a mixture of causal (non-sports wear), work clothing, and dress wear. I kept the bottom part of his side to be his jerseys sports t-shirts and casual wear, then I organized his jerseys by the kind of sport and did the same with the t-shirts, again I did it as a convenience for him so he knows where everything is and I know where to put everything away. I organized the top area having long-sleeved items on the left in the back (as he barely wears any of that) and his short sleeve dressy shirts in the center leaving his work attire on the right in the front since that is all most used.
The cubby space is just about all his as he has his hats, ties, bathing suits, jeans, work pants, and a lot of sweatshirts. I organized those spaces keeping sweatshirts towards the bottom knowing those barely get used and his jeans above that with this dress and work pants where he can grab them easily. Bathing suits and hats share space and are above his work pants and he never uses his ties so those are up top sharing space with more hats. I added a freestanding towel rack next to the cubby area so he can use it as a valet where he can put what he wants to wear to work there, next to the valet I have my towels since we do not have a linen closet within the master bedroom which I explained in my Linen Storage Products post. The chest of drawers has all of my bathing suits as well as small handbags. Everything else is in our bedroom furniture.
Tips and tricks to maximizing your space.
Maximizing your space within your bedroom closet has a lot to do with where you place your bulky items and how much clothing you have. If you own a lot of sweatshirts as my husband does, folding them neatly inside cubbies or a drawer will give you more hanging space. If you have small purses or a lot of accessories and you have the space for a small chest of drawers that would be a great option rather than hanging them or taking space on your cubbies, plus in my opinion, it can get messy. As you can see I kept my larger purses and backpacks hung on the wall out of the way.
Hangers! Yes, the type of hangers you have can really help give you more hanging space. I used to have the plastic hangers and a couple of years ago switched to the felt/velvet-lined ones. Not only did they maximize my space but they also look nicer as well as keep the clothing on there without falling off!
You also need to go through your clothing and see what works best in drawers versus your closet or cubbies. What works for me may not work for you. I live in a warmer climate so I don’t have many bulky items. You can also use the top of your closet to put seasonal items if you don’t need that space to store anything else. We use the top part for Christmas decoration storage and luggage storage.
If there is one thing you take away from this post today make it be my rule of thumb. Every season (yes every season) I do a mini cleanout in my master closet. If there is something in there I know I haven’t used within the last year I will either get rid of it or my rule of thumb is if it isn’t used within the following year DUMP IT (donate it). That is my rule of thumb, go by the seasons if it hasn’t been used from the last season/year hand it down or like my gram says, “when in doubt throw it out!” The longer you hold on to items you DO NOT USE the messier and more packed your spaces will become. Luckily I keep up with it and we haven’t hoarded so moving out hasn’t been as frustrating as it could have been.
One more tip that others use when keeping their closet tidy, when you purchase a new item throw away (donate/sell) an old one! I personally don’t use this one because I go through every season but some people prefer this approach!
What are some of your tips for cleaning out and organizing your closets? Comment with your answer below!
Hey there! I’m the owner & author of Life Is Homemade (the blog), as well as Mad About Madeleines. I hope you enjoyed some of the delicious recipes, how-to’s, DIYs, & product reviews I blogged about. Thank you for your previous support I hope you stick around on my new journey with Mad About Madeleines.