Tackling Your Wardrobe One Step At a Time
- Elaine Gully
- Jul 18, 2019
- 3 min read
If you are feeling motivated to get started on decluttering and organising your clothes category this blog post can give you some inspiration and tips to get you on your way.
Here is a list of steps to follow to get your wardrobe looking organised and awesome! Make sure you follow the steps in order. Although the first step seems really scary it is very powerful and will be worth it. Remember it is going to get a little bit worse before it gets a whole lot better but hang (no pun intended!) in there!
1) Empty all of your clothes onto the floor, or a spare bed, somewhere that you can leave them as the process may take longer than a day.
2) Create areas for things you are a) keeping, b) donating/recycling, c) selling and d) discarding.
3) Have a plan for what you are going to do with your sell and donated items before you start and make sure you get them to this place immediately. Do not put them in your garage, where they are likely to sit for months afterwards! Call Op shops to see if they want items. Or post free on pay it forward or other community support FB pages.
4) Start with a subcategory such as pants or shirts. Then pick up each individual item of clothing (yes each one!) and decide whether or not you want to keep it. Marie Kondo, as many of you who have seen her tv show will know, uses the term sparking joy, a process where you must ask yourself if the item sparks joy. It might sound a little daft but what it's actually getting you to do is ask yourself how you feel about something. Some things you pick up will instantly make you happy for whatever reason, but other things may be less provoking of a feeling. So make a decision based on how the outcome makes you feel. If you decide to discard the item in your hands, do you feel ok about that? You might feel conflicted for any number of reasons. e.g. I bought this 3 years ago but I've never worn it so it’s a waste if I get rid of it. Well if you haven’t worn it in 3 years chances are you are never going to wear it! So think about why you bought it? Maybe an impulse buy when shopping with friends or an online buy to cheer you up that day. In this case the item has still served a purpose so you can bid it a guilt free farewell.
Your decision making process will get sharper and faster as you progress through your items. If you are feeling over whelmed and struggling, start with the easy items, things you know you want to keep. Do the same thing if you hit a wall with an item or items and really don't know what to do. Put them aside for now and come back to them later.
5) Work through your subcategories until you have completed the culling/sorting process. You never put anything away until you are finished sorting. This is very important.
6) Always tidy up at the end of the day. This process takes a while so it’s important that you are not living in even more chaos that you started with. That’s why doing subcategories is a good approach, you can achieve a sub category in a few hours.
7) Don’t leave it more than 1 week between categories.
8) Don’t let anyone go through your discarded items - they might guilt you into keeping something you have made the decision to discard or they might take things for themselves just so you don’t throw them away. If you have something specific in mind that you want to offer someone, call them up and ask them about the specific item, don’t say come over and go through the stuff I’m chucking away!
Once you have completed all of these steps you are ready to start organising! The fun part that I love!
Tips for organising
Fold over hanging as much as possible.
Stand items upright in drawers instead of stacking on top of one another.
Section drawers with boxes or baskets.
It is recommended to hang things by category, colour (dark to light) and height (longest to shortest). This can be difficult so it's absolutely fine to organise by category or colour or material if that's what makes sense for your clothes.
Encourage the family to get involved. Teach kids to fold from a young age. Believe it or not it’s easier for kids to learn how to fold than it is to tidy toys! Show them where their clothes live so that they know where to put things, dedicated places make for habitual tidy behaviour.
Check out these pics for some ideas on how to organise your wardrobe. Happy tidying!
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