You already know about decluttering your closet, using common closet features like shelves, rods, and dressers, and rotating your wardrobe seasonally. However, you’re still having problems fitting everything in your closet. Some surprising hacks can help you make your custom closet system more organized.
Here are some less common closet-organization tips to consider:
- Order Hanging Clothes by Color
- Use Dividers for Shelves and Drawers
- Fold Your Clothes a Different Way
- Add Functional Furniture
Let's take a closer look at some of these less well-known ways of taking control of your closets.
Order Hanging Clothes by Color
A common way to organize your clothes is to go by type of clothing. Pants on one side of the rod, then skirts, then blouses, then dresses, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with that system, but it’s not the only one to consider and it may not be the best choice for you. Have you thought about organizing your clothes by color, instead?
It may sound a little strange at first. You’d have pants, skirts, tops, and dresses all mixed up! Wouldn’t that be chaos? Remember, the point is better organization, and a sign of good organization is when you can find what you need without having to hunt and you're able to see what you have at a glance.
Colors are a strong visual cue. When you organize clothes by color and you know you’re looking for a red shirt, your eye will immediately be drawn to the section of the rod where the red clothes hang, instantly eliminating most of the line of hanging clothes. From there, you should be able to find the shirt you’re looking for very quickly. What’s more, when you’re putting clothes away, the task will also be easier, since you’ll just be matching the colors of the pieces that you’re putting away with the section holding that color.
On top of that, a rainbow closet is a visually interesting and attractive design!
Use Dividers for Shelves and Drawers
You fold your clothes neatly, but in a few days, they’re jumbled together and falling off the shelf or preventing the drawer from closing, and it’s tough to find anything. What’s happening? The problem is that you’re probably trying to create neat stacks of clothes, but they’re coming into contact as you get things off the shelves or open and close the drawers.
It’s a lot easier for the stacks to stay neat if they don’t interfere with each other. There’s an easy way to make that happen: dividers! If your shelf would normally support two stacks of clothes, put one divider in the middle and now neither stack has any place to go or any way of mixing with its neighbor. A wider shelf or drawer could be divided into thirds.
Fold Your Clothes a Different Way
Another thing to consider is how you fold your clothes. You may not be doing it in the most space-efficient way, even if the folding method you use is the one that was passed down to you by your mother and grandmother. There are other methods that won’t wrinkle your clothes and may allow you to store more things and make less of a mess while accessing them.
Good Housekeeping shares the Marie Kondo method for folding different types of clothes. You’ll learn how to fold both T-shirts and jeans so they can be stored horizontally, which means that you can pick up the one you want without having to rifle through a stack and potentially undo your organization system. You can also learn the best way to fold dress shirts, sweaters, and even socks. These methods can seem a bit more complicated than what you’re used to, but the folding will go quickly once you’ve learned and practiced the method, and your storage will be much more efficient.
Add Functional Furniture
If you have a walk-in closet, one of the great things about having all that space is the ability to add furniture. You can have a bench, an ottoman, a closet island, or something else. Increase your organizational abilities by adding functional furniture – pieces that double as storage space.
Many ottomans have a piece that lifts up, revealing a hollow where you can store more clothes or accessories. Storage benches include storage compartments underneath the seating area. A closet island should have drawers or cabinets, as well as a surface space that can hold baskets, trays, or other tabletop organizers.
Conclusion
Go beyond the basics to find ways to further organize your custom closet system. Try a new hanging system, add dividers to drawers and shelves, learn more efficient folding methods, and bring in functional furniture.
