So for the very first Spring Cleaning post, I'm going to tackle my closet! Don't get me wrong, I love my closet and everything I buy for it is carefully curated (well if it's on sale, I sometimes can't help myself) but every once in a while, stuff piles up and suddenly you realise that what looked cute then doesn't look so hot right now. And another perk to regularly cleaning out your closet is that you get to see what you have, tops and other things that have found their way so far back into your closet that you've practically forgotten they existed. Another is that you get to sort of put on a fashion editor's hat and throw out or give away the things that you no longer need/want and create more space in your closet for more of the things that fit your personal style. Not everyone has crazy big rooms for closet space and you've got to treat your closet space much like prized real estate, you gotta make do with what you have and make sure that what's taking up that precious space is equally as precious. When you love clothes as I do, have a crippling shopping addiction, you're going to have an easier time when you've cleaned out a few spaces to which your new purchases can find a home in.
I'm going to share with you guys my tips and tricks to make cleaning out your closet fun and as stress-free as possible. But let me first give you a background on my closet space. I have a "walk-in" closet, now don't imagine some sort of elaborate setup, it's merely a meter or so long of hallway that leads to my bathroom and is adjacent to my bedroom, hence "walk-in." I have two closets on either side of the hallway, and for this post's purposes, it'll be called Fold Closet and Hang Closet. Fold Closet, as the name pertains, is filled with clothes that can just be folded and therefore, save more space. Inside the Fold Closet are separate organisers that make it easier to identify where everything is.
The Breakdown of the Fold Closet:
1. House Clothes (basically all the clothes that you wear around the house and can't be caught dead in outside.)
2. Bottoms (jeans, shorts, skirts, etc.)
3. Tops (sweaters, tees, blouses, etc.)
4. Fitness gear (track pants, jogging/yoga pants, workout tanks, zip hoodies, etc.)
5. Lounge/Sleepwear (pajamas, robes, nightgowns, etc.)
6. Outerwear (non-workout hoodies, cardigans, anoraks, etc.)
Those 6 divisions make it much easier to grab clothes without messing up the other clothes and within those divisions, you can pretty much arrange it anyway you want, by colour, by use, etc. You can grab any clear plastic organiser, clear makes more sense in my opinion so you can see the clothes in it, although in my closet, I had shelves put in, so they made little box-shaped shelves that each division would go in. You can even make use of a label-maker to label each shelf/container. The Container Store has some pretty sturdy and stylish containers that come in assorted sizes and colours.
Now for the Hang Closet, it's where I keep all of the clothes that have to be pressed, dry-cleaned, and can't be folded, and usually these are divided into two divisions, Outerwear and Dresses. Obviously there are outerwear that can't simply be folded, like coats, parkas, blazers, and the like, and these go into the fold closet in their respective hangers, I try to organise these by season, the lighter ones that are used for spring/summer, like trench coats, swing coats, and light pea coats usually are hung in one section while the heavier coats, wool coats, heavier trench coats, parkas, are hung in another section of the closet.
Dresses such as the ones for cocktail parties, gowns, are hung in another section, and a good tip will be to get good-quality hangers, and making sure that they don't ruin the shape of your garments, if you don't want to go all out on a satin-covered hanger, you can buy pads or just tie inexpensive ribbon around your metal/plastic hanger to create your own.
So, how do you edit all of these things? What goes into the throwaway pile and what goes into the keep pile? I employed a series a questions that made it easier for me to "let go" of certain things and decided which ones to keep.
"If you were in a store right now, would you buy it?"
"How long ago did you last wear it?" (obviously if it's a seasonally-related piece, this question won't exactly apply)
"Does this fit in with the image/brand you are trying to project?"
Now if most of your answers are in the negative, well, the decision's pretty obvious, and you have to let go of that certain piece. Sure it might be hard, but just think about how you can get more things to replace it that feel truer to your image/personality. If you really are having second thoughts, it's good to have a second opinion, particularly from a person who knows your sense of style well, in my case, I had my sister to help me decide on certain pieces. Having a second opinion puts things into perspective and makes it easier for you to be more objective on selecting pieces.
I basically did the same thing for all of my shoes, looking into my shoe closet and realising that I barely had space to even squeeze ONE flat in made me decide to edit and clean it out. I had shelves built in my shoe closet so I can group shoes together by shelf.
The Breakdown of the Shoe Closet:
1st Shelf (Bottom Shelf): This is where I stack all of my boots, whether they're riding boots, short boots, or rain boots, they're the ones that don't fit into the other shelf, and since the bottom shelf has the biggest space, it makes sense to put all of these in there.
2nd Shelf: The Flats Shelf, this is where I keep all of my flats, ballet flats, sandals, anything that doesn't have a heel, I usually keep the sandals on one side and the flats on the other, and since flats take up so little space, you can even lay one pair on top of each other to save more space.
3rd Shelf: The Wedge Shelf, I used to keep these together with the heels but since wedges take quite a bit of space and you can't stack them together like flats, it made sense to just keep them in a separate shelf.
4th Shelf: The Heels Shelf, this is where I placed all of my heels, pumps, stilettos, platforms, chunky heels, anything that had a heel on it that wasn't a wedge shoe, it went into this shelf.
5th Shelf: Miscellaneous, this is where all the miscellaneous shoes went, sneakers, flip flops, shoes that didn't belong into the other types.
Dividing my shoes into these categories makes it easier for me to look for them and also to get a feel of what I feel like wearing for the day, if you don't have shelves, you can find cheap shoe organisers at your local store, and its better if you can find the transparent ones so you know what's inside.
I hope that those tips and tricks helped into putting perspective on how to edit and clean your closet, trust me, I felt so much better after looking at my newly organised closet knowing that the clothes and shoes inside reflect my personality better and that my old clothes are going to somewhere where people need it more than I do. Besides, you can just chalk it up as an excuse for more shopping!
#toopreptofunctionspringcleaning
No comments:
Post a Comment