If you want to get ruthless in #decluttering your #closet, set a maximum number of hangers or limits on how many of which category of garment you will keep, says Simple Lionheart Life. You can track garment usage to ensure that only your favorites stay in rotation by turning the hangers in your closet around; after you wear an item, put it back hanging the right way. Any garments still hanging backward at the end of the season can likely be #donated. Or for a more immediate #purge, imagine yourself wearing each item of clothing or outfit when you run into an old friend or acquaintance — would you look and feel your best at that moment?
Tag: closet organization
Start Decluttering With a Single Closet
Don’t make #decluttering into an insurmountable task — start with just one #closet. Pull everything out and sort it into #keep, #trash and #donate piles. Clothing you enjoy wearing regularly are easy keepers, while items that are too damaged, stained or stretched-out can go directly in the trash. What goes in the #donate bag is a little more nuanced: Maybe an item doesn’t fit, never worked as part of your personal style, or was part of a too-small “goal” outfit that now only inspires anxiety, CNET says. Send those #garments to ClothingDonations.org immediately, set a new goal and reward yourself with a new outfit when you achieve it.
Rainy Day? Pick a Closet to Organize
Spring is now officially just days away, and there will soon be more rain coming down than snow. Take advantage of one of your gloomier spring days to organize a closet for the upcoming warm-weather seasons. First, make sure you have enough boxes and bags at the ready, says professional organizer Denise Levine. Then, pick a closet and empty it out completely. Dust, clean and vacuum the space. Then sort your clothing, returning only the clothing you use to the closet, boxing the stuff you won’t need again until next winter, and bagging up the rejects for your next ClothingDonations.org pickup.
Sort Your Clothes by Season
Sorting and storing clothing by season helps save space and can actually streamline one’s wardrobe, according to Apartment Therapy blogger Abby Stone. Since making a habit of going through her clothing regularly, she was able to keep only what works for a particular season on hand and at the ready, avoiding duplication and making it simpler to get dressed in the morning. With a single season’s clothing in the closet at any given time, Stone was able to eliminate an entire dresser’s worth of storage, saving space.
Is It Already Too Late to Spring-Clean?
Can you believe that spring started only a couple of months ago? Back then, it seemed like there was all kinds of time to sort through the junk and spring-clean the house, but with Mother’s Day over, summer will be here before you know it. And with Memorial Day just around the corner as the “official” start of summer, there isn’t much time left to accomplish important tasks like these.
But there’s really no bad time to spring-clean. For example, SpringCleaning365.com suggests that you dedicate just five to 15 minutes per day, every day of the year, to specific cleaning and organizing tasks; by the end of the year, your life will be less cluttered and less stressful. For May, the blog suggests (among other things) dedicating an entire week to a master closet purge and a thorough cleanup of digital photos.
While digital photos can undoubtedly benefit from better organization, that closet purge will be good for more than your own mental health and well-being. After you set the winter clothing aside for storage, donate the extra garments you no longer need to ClothingDonations.org, which will distribute them to local resale stores and dedicate the proceeds to veterans’ programs.
Cosmopolitan offers a complete how-to on performing a closet purge. It says to get rid of “clone” clothing (stuff that you have multiple other and better versions of), as well as the things you bought but never wore. Also get rid of “other you” clothing, the magazine says—things you last wore years ago, when you were skinnier/heavier/younger/trendier than you are right now.
You will find “junk” during a closet purge—stuff that’s too tattered or stained to pass along to friends, relatives or ClothingDonations.org. Donate these items—at least the softer, more absorbent ones—to the rag bag. That way, they can help you with the next step in your spring-cleaning regimen: wiping down and scouring the various parts of your home that tend to collect dirt and grime.
No matter what the calendar says, it’s never too late to declutter and spring-clean!