Start your business day off great by stepping into a well-organized clothes closet.
Today’s post offers tip for organizing your clothes from fellow MN Women In Networking member*, professional organizer Maureen Heinan of Send in Maureen**.
I first let length dictate the order of my items, e.g., from left to right (or visa versa): dresses, pants, skirts, suits, jackets, and finally, tops. You can then reorder them within their category according to style, e.g., long sleeve to short sleeve to sleeveless. Then, within each style, arrange them by color, e.g., white/beige to pastels to bright colors to brown/black.
At this point you could remove all off-season items from this area of your closet. (In Minnesota we really just have two seasons: spring/summer and fall/winter.) Place them (in the same order) in another part of the closet or in a different closet altogether. Remember that if you box up off-season clothing, you’ll just have to re-launder or re-iron it all again. (But it really depends on the space limitations of your closet.)
How to Get Your Closet Organized
If you don’t have a lot of coordinates to mix and match and you prefer to hang outfits together, you can use an alternate approach. With hangers similar to those found in clothing stores, you can hang your bottoms and tops on companion hangers.Complete the ensemble by draping the outfit with your scarves or jewelry (tip: safety pin a tiny mesh bag holding your earrings). You can then follow the rule of ‘long sleeve to short sleeve to sleeveless’.
If you can’t recall if you’ve worn an item very often, here’s a trick to help you at the end of each current season: Place hangers‘backwards’ on the rod (with clothes on them); then, over time, after you wear (and wash) an item, return it with the hook of the hanger pointing away from you. At the end of (or throughout) each season, you’ll immediately notice that there were some items you simply never wore! Consider WHY… didn’t fit? need repair? need a coordinate or shoes to go with it? Remedy the issue and wear the item again or finally decide to let go by donating it. (By the way, uniform hangers take up less space and are visually ‘calmer’ than mismatched ones (felt-covered ones are my favorites).
Wondering whether you should fold or hang your sweaters? My recommendation is to fold heavy, hang light. You can then hang them like a shirt or partially fold and hang as you would a half-folded pair of pants.And finally, just for fun… do you know how to fold a T-shirt in 2 seconds! Watch on to fold your cloths to check out this cool YouTube video for step by step instructions.
Consider hiring a professional Minneapolis image consultant.
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