The Ultimate Closet Organization Guide

It’s so important to have a well-organized closet. After all, this is the place where you start your day, of course. You’ve got all of your clothes, shoes, and apparel stuffed into this tiny (sometimes a large) room.

If it’s a complete mess, you’re going to have a lot of trouble getting through the rest of your day. Who wants to spend 30 minutes looking for an outfit?

Having a streamlined, functional, and organized closet will save you hours each week and give you less stress as you start your day.

You won’t need to wonder where the laundry gets put back because you have a place for everything. You’ll also feel total relaxation when you can see all of your things at a glance, knowing exactly where everything goes and why, and it’s simply beautiful to look at.

Here are some practical and simple tips to help you create an organized closet so you can save hours each week.

Assessing Your Current Closet Situation

Before you get started, it’s important to have a plan. Especially when you’re doing something unfamiliar it’s good to go to an expert that can keep things simple for you.

Here at Alana’s Organizing, we teach using the AO Method in our online courses. The first thing you want to do is set up an area in your bedroom or near the closet where you can make a sorting station.

You’re going to need to pull everything out of the closet - so you’ll need a place to put things. The bed is a great place to put clothing because it’s a large area. Get a few boxes that you can put clothes for donation, as well as broken items and things that don’t belong in the closet.

Sort everything into categories so you can see exactly what you have. After you’ve done that, you’ll want to take a look at the closet itself and think of what is frustrating you now.

Do you have too many clothes? Do you not have good shelving and organizing products to keep things together? Do you hate folding up clothes and putting them in the drawers? What frustrations are you currently experiencing?

Decluttering Your Closet

Once you’ve pulled all of your clothes, shoes and accessories out of the closet, you want to do a thorough decluttering.

Go through each item to decide what you want to keep, donate, sell, or toss. If you’ve had an item in your closet for over six months and you haven’t worn it, or the tags are still on it, be honest with yourself and ask if you realistically see yourself using it anytime soon.

Don’t get too emotional; just stick to the facts. This will help with your decision-making.

If you’re having trouble letting something go, ask yourself why. Does the item hold sentimental value? Did you pay good money, and you don’t want to waste your money? Are you saving it for when you can fit back into it again? Did someone give it to you, and you feel guilty, so you’re still holding onto it?

These are all common reasons why people hold onto things they don’t need or want and are no longer of use to them.

It’s OK to get rid of something that isn’t working for you. If you don’t wanna throw it out, give it to a donation center so they can sell it to someone who can use it. If you spent good money on it, holding onto it won’t give you back the money that you spent.

It’s just a reminder that you spent some money on it. It’s not holding any value by sitting unused in your closet. If someone gave you a gift, the gift is yours to do with what you like. Re-gift it to someone in need.

Find a local charity that is meaningful to you. People are always in need, and it feels good to give back to the community. Even local donation centers can sell your items and make a profit, providing jobs and stimulating the economy.

If you’ve been holding onto a pair of pants that fit you five years ago, and you’re hoping to fit them again, don’t hold onto it. It doesn’t mean that you will never fit into those pants again, but it doesn’t help you now to be living in the past.

Right now, you may not be ready to fit in those pants again. Organize your closet for where you’re at in your life right now. If you’re trying to lose weight, it’s a journey.

Buy a new outfit as inspiration. Besides, fashion comes and goes, and the pants you bought five years ago may not even be in style by the time you fit into them again.

Designing an Efficient Closet Layout

When you’re designing the new layout for your closet, do you want to maximize the space as much as possible so you can fit everything in neatly.

Maximize your space using shelving and racks. If you have a standard closet, the shelving at the top can be used with shoe organizers, containers, and bins instead of a dresser.

It’s also great to use a variety of organizing products to accommodate the different accessories and types of clothing that you have.

There’s a wide variety of bins, hanging bins, organizers for belts, hats, purses, Ross, underwear, and much more. You can hang things on the wall. If you don’t have space on the shelves.

It’s also really important to customize a layout to fit your needs specifically. Take your height into consideration, do you need items up high or down low? Make sure that the items you use more frequently are in an easy to reach area.

Try to keep everything as visual as possible so that you don’t have to guess where your things are when you need them.

Also, don’t feel pressured to jump onto any new trends just because others are doing it. If you don’t like folding your clothes, don’t try to file fold everything. Folding isn’t for everyone. Personally, I love hanging up as much as I can, it’s easy and it saves me time.

Organizing by Category

It’s important to create a zone for everything and group items into their own categories. Pants, shorts, tops, dresses, jackets, etc. Shoes and accessories in a dedicated area and not scattered around all over the floor.

When you have things grouped into their own area, you don’t have to look everywhere for a specific item. If it isn’t in its group, that means it’s probably laying around the house somewhere, or you’re wearing it.

It can be tempting to blend these categories together, but it’s really important that you don’t. Organization means that there is a systematic way of having things set up.

When you simply stuff things into random places, that is opposite of organization. It’s the lazy route. You’ll find that things are actually easier when it has a dedicated space to be put in.

Implementing Practical Storage Solutions

Clear containers aren’t from everyone, but they make it really easy to see what you have at a moments notice. For the closet, a clear container can work great for shoes that don’t get worn all of the time, as well as accessories.

Open concept shelves and racks are great as well for being able to see what you have. When you’re organizing your drawers, using a divider for some of the smaller items can keep things in their own compartment. This makes accessing the items quick and easy, as well as laundry time when you need to put things away.

While labels and tags aren’t for everyone, they are extremely helpful in the beginning stages of closet organizing. When you organize your closet, you’ve completely transformed the space into something different.

You’re going to need time to adjust to the changes, and a label will help you remember where everything is. This also helps if you’re sharing your closet with anyone else, they will know where everything is, and it will cut down on the communication when you can’t find things.

Maintaining an Organized Closet

After you organize everything back into your closet, you need to maintain it with a routine so that I can stay nice and organized. Make a schedule, usually once a week, depending on how messy your house gets.

Go through and assess anything that you haven’t worn, anything that isn’t fitting properly, anything that you don’t really like anymore and put it in a grocery bag to give away or toss it out. You can also do this when you’re doing your laundry each week, if you see things that don’t make sense anymore that is a great time to get rid of it.

Try to develop some basic habits of putting things away where they are supposed to go. When you’re tired and you’ve had a long day, you don’t feel like putting things where they need to go. Just set a timer for five minutes.

Put things away at the end of the day and you’d be surprised how much you can get done. These little actions add up and save you hours each week. Organizing seems like the hard part, but the truly hard part is keeping it up because that requires ongoing maintenance.

That requires building habits and sticking to them. If you make a commitment to have a little bit of time each day, this will make cleanup mindless and easy.

Bonus Tips and Ideas

One popular idea that I love is making a hat wall. If you don’t have a proper place to store your hats, take some command strips, place them on the wall in your closet, and make a decorative display out of your hats.

Add some fun wallpaper, a mirror, and even a speaker as well to make it fun. Getting dressed should be fun!

If you’re having a hard time fitting, everything in, using vacuum sealed bags like these from Ziploc are great to provide more space. Rotate your seasonal items so that you have plenty of room for what you’re currently using and you can switch it out as the weather changes.

If you’re looking for more closet inspiration, you can always check out our TikTok, Instagram, or blog articles that feature tips on the subject.

If you’ve been waiting to organize your closet, now is the time to get started. It doesn’t need to be complicated, you just need a simple process to keep you on track and motivated. Our closet organizing course is perfect if you’re looking to DIY an Instagram worthy closet.

There you’ll find step-by-step video tutorials with before and after photos, as well as detailed video instructions, walking you through the process and how you can tailor it for your situation. Not to mention product recommendations and ways to help you use the different containers for your space.

Happy closet organizing!