Easy Tips to Organize Your Closets
Closets are an amazing place you can store everything! All of your clothes and other stuff can go here, nice and out of the way to keep clutter from building up all over the place. But what about the build-up of clutter in the closet? What do you do when your closets become the kind of mess you thought they’d help you avoid? With some strategic work, you can organize your closets to keep them clean and functioning as a useful storage space.
Purge what you can
It’s the usual cheat to get around a mess: get rid of the stuff making the mess. Selling or giving away the things you never use can save a lot of space in your closet.
Don’t add things without removing something
This is the other curse of a closet: accumulating stuff. Make it a rule that you don’t add anything without first removing something else. It won’t directly help you organize the mess, but it will at least help to keep it from getting worse.
Add a bookcase or dresser
Should you put furniture in your closet? If it helps to organize things, yes. A bookcase can keep things on easily visible shelves, and a small dresser can easily store small, less-frequently used items.
Hang things on the door
The back of a door can serve as storage space. Attach some hooks and you're set. Since you’re in a rental, you’ll likely want to use command hooks. They don’t require nailing anything to the door, can still hold a lot of weight and can easily be removed when you move out.
Elevate items based on priority
Put your most frequently used clothes at eye level, less used things lower down and the things you use least often up as high as they’ll go. This helps you keep the most used things easily accessible and takes advantage of the hard to reach space on high shelves.
Use special hanger systems to hang more items
If stuff is accumulating on the floor because of how much you have, you’ll want to check out some special hangers. They’ll allow you to hang 6-8 items of clothing in the space of a single hanger by going vertical instead of just horizontal. Using these can get clothes off of the floor and much better organized.
Don’t put everything in the closet
Does everything really have to go in the closet? It’s convenient but also leads to an accumulation of stuff. If you have anything in your closet that might work well somewhere else, just move it there. Some clothes are best kept in your dresser.
Remove things that get in the way
Are there shelves that get in the way? Did someone else put a dresser in the closet that you don’t want to move? If you’re in a really cramped place, you might even want to replace the door with a curtain or screen. Anything that gets in the way of you using the closet the way you want to should go. If this requires any sort of disassembly or any changes to the closet (such as removing doors), make sure to check with your landlord before making this kind of change.
It's hard to organize your closets, but they can be tamed. With some work, you can organize your closet and make it pleasant to look at and useful for storing and organizing all of your treasures.
