August 18, 2014
5 Ways to Keep Everyone’s Clothing Organized
This week’s organizing task is CLOTHES. (August’s FREE cleaning and organizing calendar is here!) If you struggle with keeping clothing organized or just want to do a little wardrobe clean-out before school starts, this week’s challenge is a great one. Take some time this week to implement one of these ideas or all of them. Use these tips for yourself, your spouse, and/or your kids – the tips work great for everyone and are super simple to implement today!
- DONATE BASKET OR BIN – Keep a small donate basket or bin in each family member’s closet – when it’s filled up bring the contents to your favorite donation spot or give to a friend or family member.
- PASS DOWN BIN – If you have younger children or are saving clothes for other children, keep a bin in the closet pre-labeled and ready to be put into storage. When your child outgrows outfits put them in the bin and when the bin is filled up bring the bin to its storage spot. This is also a great solution for maternity clothing too!
- HAVE LESS – Frustrated by too many choices and lots of laundry? Pare down what you and your family members have be deciding what you really need and are actually wearing. Go through closets and donate or toss outgrown and worn out clothing. Once you’ve purged clothing that is obviously not worth holding onto, determine what you haven’t worn in 6 months and and donate or toss those items. Not sure if you should keep something? Turn the hanger around – if you or a family member doesn’t wear the clothing in a month or two, find a new home for it.
- GROUP CLOTHING – Clothing is easier to find when it’s grouped with like articles of clothing – long sleeved shirts together, short sleeved shirts together, pants together, etc. Put clothing in its proper spot every time and you’ll always be able to locate that favorite article of clothing in minutes.
- COMPARTMENTS – Add small baskets and bins to drawers to keep socks, undies, t-shirts and other items separated and easy to find.
Adding these simple ideas to your clothing organization can keep frustrations down and clothing organized. Have any tips to share?
Jessica Says
I got this idea from another blog but, using old shoe boxes as dividers in something like your underwear drawer to keep it organized works pretty well too. You can either put the entire half of a shoe box in the drawer and use it like a bin to hold stuff, or if the box is large enough, but it up and use the pieces of cardboard as dividers to section off the drawer.
It’s a rather cheap option, but sometimes those work quite well. And everyone tends to have a few old shoe boxes lying around, and you can always decorate them to make them look better. Get the kids into it, they’d probably find it fun.
Jenn Says
We keep a Donate bin in our closet, so that the moment my fiance or I decide we don’t like the way something fits or sits on us, we can toss it in there. I have found that a bin with a lid is vital – if you can’t see it, you’re less likely to try to fish it back out and try to make it work “one more time”. We have a wonderful old house with limited closet space, so loving every piece of clothing we own (even undershirts and workout clothes) is vital to keep things orderly.
MamaBear Says
We just downsized from a 3,500 square foot house to 1,700 square feet and our bedroom is so small I chose to skip dressers for my husband and I so we didn’t give up valuable floor space. Instead, we use bookshelves with those cloth cube bins as our ‘drawers’. I find things stay much more organized because I have 16 different bins to separate clothes between instead of 4 or 5 drawers per person that end up a jumbled mess. I don’t have to double and triple up on how many different types of clothes go in each drawer. Now I have a specific spot for everything and it is very fast and easy to drop things into the bins when I put clothes away.