In the interest of being real, here is a picture of what my
closet looked like when I started this project.
That’s pretty bad, right? I can feel clean freaks cringing
all over the blogosphere. But to be honest, it drives me nuts too. I’ve never
been the cleanest person in the world (my mom and all former roommates are
screaming AMEN to that!), but my closet has ALWAYS been organized. So the fact
that I have let it get this bad is pretty dadgum bad. I mean, a shoe rack with
only one pair of shoes on it? What the heck is up with that!!
I was so glad this challenge with Simple Mom popped up, with
this week’s focus on the closet. I tried to find pictures of the closet before
Ben put up the organizing system, but I couldn’t find them ANYWHERE. But we
used a simple system made of brackets and shelves that we bought from Home
Depot. I knew I needed a bigger hanging section for dresses, pants, and Ben’s
clothes, so that takes up about half of the closet. The other half of the
closet was measured so that my longer tops could hang on the top rack, while
still leaving room on the bottom rack for skirts and some shorter tops. We
finally bought the shoe rack after Ben and I got some beautiful boots for
Christmas this year (not that its doing us any good with all the shoes on the
floor!).
And here are the pictures after I spent a little less than
an hour organizing.
 |
| The shelves still need organizing, but its much better! |
Here are some simple tips to organizing your closet, at
least from the point of view of an OCD messy person (yes, they do exist!).
1.
Start with a good organizing system.
It doesn’t have to be expensive, or even fancy. It just has to work. If
you have a crappy builder-basic closet like I do, then making the most of your
space is key. Without our closet system, Ben would probably be getting dressed
in the spare bedroom. : ) But in
all seriousness, this system adds space and function to a small space.
2.
Divide your closet by item (or color).
Organizing freaks everywhere argue
about this topic all the time. (Cant you just imagine clean freaks meeting up
and being OCD about stuff like that? Hilarious!). Personally, I prefer to sort
everything by clothing type, and then further sort by color. For example: my
closet is divided into pants, dresses, shirts, sweaters, skirts, and jackets
(with a little bit of Ben’s clothes thrown in there). My shirts are further
divided into sleeveless, short sleeve, long sleeve, short sleeve t-shirts, and
long sleeve t-shirts. These categories are further divided down into color,
arranged with the ROYGBIV method (obviously the only way to organize colors).
This works for me because I know EXACTLY where to look for the blue and white
stripe long sleeved sweater (although there may or may not be a few of those…I
have a small (major) obsession with stripes, ok???). In all seriousness, this
really does help when I am putting together an outfit.
3.
Consider arranging your closet by items that you
wear most often.
I keep all of Ben’s clothes in the center
so he doesn’t get frustrated going to the back of the closet each day to find
what he wants to wear. I also keep my jeans and dresses on the far left, and my
sweaters and jackets on the far right. I don’t wear these items as often as my
shirts and skirts, so it is more time effective to keep those lesser-worn items
out of the way.
4.
Keep your nice shoes off of the floor.
Let me explain. Ben and I both have a nice collection of boots (btw-not all are pictured). We would
both be sick if they were chewed on by our sweet-but-mischievous 60-pound lab
puppy that seems to want to get into everything within sight. So we arrange our
shoes with our nicest ones on top. Now truth be told, it isn’t going to keep
her from getting into them if she really wants to, but the stray shoe laying in
the middle of the floor is a lot more attractive than the flats neatly stacked
by pairs.
That
is all I have to say about closet organization, but let me leave you with this:
do what works for YOU. The world’s most expensive and genius organizing system
won’t work if you don’t get it. So play around and figure out what does!
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