5 Simple Steps to Organizing Your Clothes Closet

It happens to the best of us: a disorganized clothes closet. You get busy and the closet becomes a catchall for other items besides clothes, and you’re too tired to put clothes back into any kind of order after they are washed and hung.

With cooler weather just around the corner for most of us, this is a perfect time to get your closet organized. For next to nothing, you can organize your clothes closet in no time at all. 

Let’s dive right into it. I’ll show you how with 5 simple steps for organizing your clothes closet and we’ll take it from chaotic to clutter free.

Step #1 – Mindset

First, you need to have the correct mindset going into closet organization. You need to be okay with purging items from your closet that don’t belong there or items you haven’t worn in quite a while. I like to keep 3 words in the back of my mind when I go through my closet once or twice each year:

Keep, sell, or donate.

Ultimately the “keep” section is what will remain in your closet, and by removing those items you notate as “sell” and “donate”, you should have a less cluttered closet.

Step #2 – Empty the Closet

If you have the space, I have found it easiest to start with a blank slate when organizing. Take everything out of your closet. Leave the clothes on their hangers and place piles of clothes neatly on your bed or floor. If space is an issue, just empty a small section to start.

Step #3 – Categories and Seasonal Changes

If you live where the temperatures fluctuate enough to have a varied wardrobe, you can change out seasonal items throughout the year as the need arises. The best way to store those off-season clothing items is to use vacuum-sealable bags. These bags take up less than half the space that traditional bags use and can easily slide under the bed or on a shelf in the closet once they are compressed. For the next season, just swap out the clothes from the vacuum-sealable bags and compress again.

As for the current-season items, I like to organize my clothes by type of material and style. All my long pants get hung together, thicker sweaters get hung together, dressier tops together, t-shirts are grouped together, etc. Organizing my clothes in this fashion makes outfit creation a breeze because I can easily create an outfit like a sweater with long pants by grabbing one item from each section.

Step #4 – Filter Clothes as you Hang

Remember those “sell” and “donate” categories? As you filter through the clothes you placed in piles on the floor, decide if the item is something you wear repeatedly or haven’t worn in a year or more. Those items that you haven’t worn in over a year probably won’t be worn again, so they need to go into a sell or donate pile. As hard as it is sometimes to get rid of items that you may have paid good money for, what’s the purpose of keeping it if you haven’t even worn it? Ask yourself if you would still buy this article of clothing if you were out shopping today. There’s no reason it needs to take up space in your closet, if the answer is “no.”

The items that are left from your filtering should be the items that you love and feel good about yourself when wearing. Hang these favorites in your closet in a way that makes the most sense for how you create your outfits. I also organize my categories by color family as close as possible.

For the rest of the items that you decided were worthy of being sold or donated, place these into large trash bags. Then set a reminder in your phone to actually go donate those items to a local cause or take pictures of the items to sell online. Don’t let the bags take up the space that you just organized or you are moving one problem area into another.   

Step #5 – Shoe Organization and Odds and Ends

If you don’t have shelves in your closet, I highly recommend installing some shelves above the rods. Utilizing the vertical space in a closet can add so much more storage. Shelves can hold a multitude of items, but I like to store my shoes on them. I keep my shoes in their shoe boxes because boxes stack well and it keeps the shoes from becoming overly dusty.

You can also use shelves to place pretty storage baskets or boxes. These baskets work great for storing items like sandals or scarves or socks. The purpose of the baskets is to contain those odds and ends from spilling out onto the floor of your closet.

To keep the floor of the closet clear of clutter, I use plastic 3-drawer bins to hold my more casual shoes or shoes that I wear often. The bins also work great if you absolutely must store non-clothing items in your closet due to lack of storage elsewhere in your home.

That’s it. Five simple steps that you can take right now in organizing your clothes closet in no time. Did you set up a reminder in your phone to get rid of those “sell” and “donate” bags? If not, do it right now. 😉