By Alyne Lowell
Do you own a ton of clothes but can never find anything to wear when you open your closet? Do you often dig into the recesses of your closet and find outfits you don’t even remember buying? Can you never find the item of clothing you’re looking for? If this sounds like you, read on to find out how to make your closet work for you. Learn what to keep and what to discard, and how to keep everything in order.
The first step to organizing your closet is to try on every single piece of clothing and make sure that it fits. Anything that is too big or too small should be thrown away, donated to charity, or given to friends. How do you know when something fits badly? If it’s too tight around the shoulders, chest, or hips, it’s too small. If someone two or three sizes bigger than you could comfortably wear it, it’s too big. If an item of clothing you really like is too big, consider going to a tailor to get it altered.
Having thrown out all the clothes that fit badly, the next step is to throw out all the pieces that do not flatter your body. If a piece of clothing bulges in all the wrong places or accentuates all the wrong body parts, it should be thrown away. Pay attention to color as well; make sure that the clothes you keep work with your skin tone and do not make you look peaky.
Your closet should now only contain the clothes that fit you and flatter your body. What you have to do now is organize everything so they will be easy to find. Pick out the neutrals first—these are the pieces of clothing that go with pretty much anything: black jeans, white T-shirts, and black tank tops would be examples of neutrals. Next, separate the rest of your clothes into categories: jackets in one category, skirts in another, sweaters in a third, and so on. Keep the neutrals in an easy to reach section of the closet. Store the rest of the clothes by category so that they will be easy to locate in the future—you can buy different colored hangers or clear plastic boxes to help you keep track of where each category is.
These three easy steps are all you need to turn your nightmare closet into a well-organized closet. Try them out sometime when you have a free weekend!