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Tackling a massive wardrobe is one of the most intimidating tasks involved in a home declutter. Whether you’re starting a minimalist journey or you just want to be able to shut your closet doors without brute force, you’ll need to approach this project with a strategy. But it doesn’t have to be painful! Below, we’ll cover tips for how to organize the clothes in your closet so you never have to do it again.
I used to spend hours on a weekend organizing the clothes in my closet, even spending money on storage bins and painstakingly labeling things. And somehow every time, within weeks, it would be an unmanageable mess again. It was beyond frustrating. And I know from living with and talking to others – both women and men – that I wasn’t alone in this cycle of organizing and re-organizing.
Finally, I managed to break the cycle by changing my approach. Below, I’ll outline how I did it. I’ll start with the mistakes I was making. And then move on to a step-by-step guide to organizing the clothes in your closet for good.
Part 1: Common Mistakes – The Wrong Way to Organize Clothes in Your Closet
1. Focusing on Organization Over Decluttering
My biggest mistake when I was younger. Instead of decluttering, I would take out all the stuff from my messy closet, put it in categories, and then try to find unique solutions for fitting all of it back inside a tiny space. I bought storage solutions to try to make this easier. And yet no system seemed to work long term.
Here’s what tended to happen: I would tuck things away in a storage bin. Because they were very hard to see or to get to, I would completely forget about them. Then months or years later I’d buy something very similar. And so, things would continue to pile up.
Also, when storage bins are stuffed full, you won’t want to wrestle with them. Instead, you’ll just leave things out and your closet will get messy again.
2. Simply Having Too Many Clothes
his is the simplest mistake and also the most common. If you’re looking for tips on how to organize the clothes in your closet, but you haven’t culled your wardrobe first, you’re wasting your time. I recommend cutting it by at least 50%, regardless of your starting point. Though decluttering seems hard, it’s actually much more work to maintain a huge wardrobe. You’ll be in a constant state of organizing, reorganizing, and tidying forever.
3. Buying Tons of Organization Products or a Closet System
In our capitalist culture, often our first step when approaching a project is to buy a bunch of stuff. Your first thought will be, “I really need to organize the clothes in my closet.” And your next will likely be, “Let me shop for some equipment before I get started.” It’s an understandable impulse. We’ve all been programmed our whole lives to do this.
And if you look online, you’ll see tons of options. I’ve even seen “space saver” hangers to help you cram even more clothes into your closet. Not to mention vacuum-sealed bags, special bins to shove things under your bed, and on and on. This only encourages you to keep more stuff and in fact adds to the number of things cluttering your closet.
There are a few exceptions – products that can actually be helpful – which I’ll describe in Part 2 below.
4. Planning to Routinely Declutter
Common advice I’ve seen when researching how to organize clothes in your closet is to schedule time regularly to declutter and tidy your closet. I disagree with this advice. Most people are not going to make time for this step. And your closet will end up as stuffed and messy as it was to begin with. Instead, change your mindset to a more minimalist one. If you stop buying things you don’t need, keeping gifts you don’t want, and grabbing freebies when offered, your closet will stay exactly as neat and decluttered as it was immediately after you organized it.
5. Putting Off-Season Clothes in Storage
Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, is what brought my attention to his mistake. It may seem like common sense to put away clothes you won’t be using for months. That’s saving space and being organized, right?
But she argues that it’s better to have a small enough wardrobe that you can keep all your clothes visible all year. This saves you the time and effort of rearranging your closet at least twice a year. And it also encourages you to keep your wardrobe small. If you put away all your sweaters in May, you’ll forget what you have by October and likely buy things you don’t need.
6. Using the Top Shelf
You know, the shelf that you can’t reach without pulling up a chair to clamber onto. In the past, I’ve used that shelf for things I don’t use often. I figured it made sense – I’d only have to go to the trouble of reaching that shelf once or twice a year.
Here’s what actually happened: Anytime I needed something, I’d stand on my tiptoes, grab the corner of something, then pull an avalanche of junk down on my head. Often, I was in a hurry, and I wouldn’t want to get a step stool and reorganize everything on the top shelf. Instead, I would toss everything back up on the top shelf haphazardly until it all stayed put. Since even the tidiness master Marie Kondo references being too lazy to put things away properly in her home, I’m guessing I’m not the only one who used the top shelf of their closet this way.
If there are things you don’t use frequently, first consider if you actually need to keep them. Is it something you think you might need in the future but aren’t sure? You can probably let that go. If it is something you use, but infrequently (wrapping paper is one example for me), it’s better to store it somewhere within reach. Skip the top shelf entirely. If you think you don’t have room, that’s your cue to declutter a bit more.
Part 2: Steps to Organize Clothes in Your Closet
Step 1: Purge Your Wardrobe
If you want to organize the clothes in your closet, your first step will be to declutter. Unless you’re already a card-carrying minimalist, you almost certainly have way too many clothes. Beyond easier organization, there are many benefits to purging your wardrobe. Click on the banner on this page for a free guide to purging your wardrobe painlessly in a single weekend.
Step 2: Get a Few Useful Organization Items
Now I know I just said buying a bunch of storage containers and organization solutions is a common mistake to avoid. But a few products can be useful.
It’s important to wait until you’ve purged first. Then see what’s left and be judicious. For example, if you have 5 pairs of shoes, do you really need a shoe rack, or can these stay on the floor of your closet?
Also, only get storage options that leave your things visible. Closing something up and putting away will lead to forgetting about it, and it’ll become clutter.
Here are the items I’ve found can be useful:
Shoe Rack
A shoe rack is helpful if you have more than a few pairs of shoes. You can stack them on top of each other to save space on the floor of your closet. Of course, the more minimalist approach would be to line up a few pairs of shoes on the floor of your spacious, decluttered closet. But that’s not realistic for many of us who live in climates that require different shoes for each season.
Drawer Organizers
These have been especially helpful with organizing tops, socks, underwear, and my toddler’s clothes. Another option is drawer dividers. If you don’t want to spend money, you could even use shoe boxes for this.
Storage Baskets
Marie Kondo recommends against piling or stacking clothes. Instead, she recommends folding clothes and arranging them next to each other in a drawer or container. (This post from another blog demonstrates how this looks.) That way, everything is visible. It’s also easier to extract the piece you want without toppling the whole pile and making a mess. You can pull the basket off a shelf, choose the piece you want, and put it back easily.
Clear Storage Bins
Even after ruthlessly purging your wardrobe, you may still have items that just make sense to put in a storage bin. If you go that route, I recommend that you use clear bins that you can see through. And don’t overstuff them.
The key is you should easily be able to see what’s inside. You don’t want to have to search through multiple bins looking for something you use less frequently. Often, when I did that, I ended up giving up and wearing something else. In which case, the item in storage should be decluttered as I don’t really need it.
You also don’t want to put something in an opaque container and forget about it entirely until your closet becomes unmanageable and you have to do yet another declutter.
Hanging Jewelry Organizer
I’ve found a hanging jewelry organizer to be the most space-efficient way to store accessories. It hangs in your closet and has tons of tiny, clear pockets, so each piece is visible, and they don’t tangle with each other.
The only downside from a minimalism perspective is that it allows you to store quite a few pieces. And that may encourage you to keep more than you really need or use. Personally, I used the advice in this post to create a minimalist jewelry capsule. I still use the hanging jewelry organizer, but most pockets are empty. And I don’t develop decision fatigue simply from getting dressed in the morning.
Step 3: Sort What’s Left into Categories
Now that you’ve purged your wardrobe and maybe gotten a few useful storage items, it’s time to organize the clothes in your closet. At this point, you have fewer clothes than you started with, so it will be much easier to tackle.
If you read Marie Kondo’s book, you’ll find she has many suggestions for how to organize your closet to “energize” it and make it aesthetically appealing. Definitely consult her book if that sounds interesting to you.
For myself, a simpler approach has worked. Choose categories based on how you use the pieces. Examples: formal wear, work clothes, outerwear, casual, loungewear, workout clothes.
You might prefer to sort by fabric or by season, or simply tops, bottoms, dresses, etc. But for me, this strategy has been the most efficient. I know exactly where to look when I’m getting dressed for the day or for an event.
Step 4: Decide on Areas of Your Closet for Each Category
This doesn’t have to be complicated. Example: the left side of your closet is for casual wear, the middle for work clothes, and the right for formal wear and coats.
Don’t put anything in hard-to-reach places. Often, we put things we don’t use often in those spaces, assuming we’ll take the effort to get to them when we need them. But usually, we end up forgetting all about them, and they become clutter that makes our closet seem stifling. It’s better to declutter to the point where you don’t need the highest shelf or the deepest, hidden corner.
Step 5: Put Things Back in Your Closet
Use the areas you decided on in the last step. Hang up things that are likely to wrinkle. Other items can be rolled up using the KonMari method inside storage baskets.
Step 6: Ensure that Everything Is Visible
At this point, you’ve emptied your closet, decluttered, and put the remaining clothes back in newly designated areas. You’re just about done. But I recommend a final step to edit your work.
Examine your closet. Is everything you own visible to you without having to dig around? If not, see if you can change that. For items on hangers, space them out as much as possible. Are some storage baskets and containers hidden by longer pieces hanging up? Move things around until you can see them.
One of the reasons you ended up with an overstuffed closet was that you weren’t even aware of everything you had. You may have bought more clothes, not realizing you already had similar pieces. Or, you may have skipped decluttering something you don’t use anymore because it was tucked away out of sight.
Keeping things easily visible is the solution to both those situations. It also just makes your closet more functional. No more pushing things around looking for that one top you know you have. No more digging through opaque storage containers to figure out where you put your winter boots in the spring. Just easy access that makes getting dressed a breeze.
Next Steps: After You Organize the Clothes in Your Closet
Congratulations! You organized the clothes in your closet. And, if you followed the steps above, you won’t need to do it again for quite a while.
As a next step, you may want to create a capsule wardrobe from what’s left in your closet. Eventually, I’ll write a detailed post on how I curated my capsule wardrobe. In the meantime, I found these sources to be extremely helpful:
20 Essentials for Building the Perfect Capsule Wardrobe
The Ultimate Guide: How to Build Your First Capsule Wardrobe
How to Build Your Perfect Capsule Wardrobe (video)
If I Were Building My Capsule Wardrobe from Scratch…Here’s What I’d Do (video)
What have your experiences organizing clothes in your closet been like? What are some pitfalls you’ve fallen into or avoided? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
