Our wardrobes may be one of the most ignored spaces of our home. They are tucked away, not visible to the public eye. So, it easily keeps accumulating stuff and overflows in no time if we do not keep a check on it.
Your day starts with looking at your wardrobe and also ends with it. Just notice the number of times we access our wardrobes in a day. From the moment we wake up to the time we hit the bed, our wardrobe acts as an anchor point. Imagine being in a rush in the morning trying to get to office, you open the wardrobe and cannot find the right piece of clothing that you want to wear that day. Isn’t it frustrating? Or every time you open the doors to your wardrobe you are greeted with a few falling pieces and a bulk of unorganized mess. Is that how you would like to start your day?
On the other hand, imagine opening up your wardrobe and seeing everything organized, neatly folder and correctly hung up. Your brain will just be at peace looking at the space. We have a lot of triggers in our day-to-day life, and we do not need our wardrobe to be one of them. Instead make your wardrobe work for you. Let if give you the peace and clarity you deserve to take on the world.
When I started my journey to minimalism and organization, it was with my wardrobe. I had full control over it, so it was easy. This process not only led me to have a streamlined wardrobe but also had trickle effects in other aspects on my life. If you want to get started on your journey to a better organized space, starting with your own personal wardrobe is key.
Table of Content:
Why do you need an Organized Wardrobe?
It is always imperative to understand the why before the how to get started on any quest. As I always emphasize the need to understand the reason before getting started, let me jot down a few advantages to an organized wardrobe. Few of these reasons are advantages that I felt were the right reasons for me to get started, and they indeed turned out to be true. The rest are the added bonus benefits that I discovered along the journey. So, if any of these feels enticing, you may consider giving it a go to streamline your wardrobe.
- No wasting time finding something to wear.
- You have every item of clothing or accessory in its place, so you can easily decide and access what to wear when the time comes.
- Saving money by not purchasing duplicates or unnecessary items.
- When it comes to clothing, we wear 20 percent of the clothes 80 percent of the times. Hence, we tend to forget what we already have in our wardrobes. This leads us to purchasing duplicates or similar items yet again which end up gathering dust in our wardrobes.
- Easy laundry routine.
- You have less of a mess to clean up and which further streamlines the boring laundry rituals. In turn, you will always have something clean to wear
- Not contributing to the plastic pollution and the environment degradation.
- Let’s face it. The fast fashion industry is causing excessive harm to the environment. Most of the clothes that are in your wardrobe currently will eventually end up in a landfill polluting the earth for time immemorial. While it is not easy to completely ignore fast fashion, we can do our bit to hold on to the clothes that we already have and reduce consumption.
- Less cluttered mind.
- Studies have proven that our physical space affects our mind. The more cluttered the space is, the more disoriented and cluttered will be our mind. And having a cluttered mind will not be of any help when we are chasing goals and aspirations in our lives. Having a clutter free wardrobe is the beginning to a clutter free space.
- Relocation will be easy.
- One of the biggest categories of personal belongings are the items in a wardrobe. The biggest struggle I’ve seen is when one is shifting homes and there are never ending boxes of clothes, shoes and accessories that one does not wear on the regular, but still needs to afford time, money and efforts to pack and relocate. Having just the right number of things in the wardrobe will make the relocation process so easy.
- Improve Cost per Use of the Items.
- You will end up using your items more when it is organized. Thus, leading to improving the cost per use of the items and getting your money’s worth.
How to get Started to Organize your Wardrobe
Now that we’ve got the why’s out of the way, let’s start with the basics on how to get started. The goal is to get to an organized wardrobe which will serve us well for the time to come. And in order to do so, we will need certain systems in place. We not only want to create an organized wardrobe, but also a space that can be easily managed and put back together.
Also do take your time to get through the below steps. This need not be a one-day project or a weekend activity. Give yourself enough breaks and enjoy the process rather than dread it. Trust me, the first time is only the worst it can get. It is only uphill from here on out.
Step 1: Understand your personal style
The very first step to getting your wardrobe in order is to understand what your personal sense of styling is. Now, be honest here. Sit with yourself for some time and create a vision board of sorts to understand what your basic clothing style is. What kind of clothes you tend to gravitate towards, what you mostly wear. What kind of accessories you like to carry etc.
But be mindful here to differentiate between your fantasy self and your real self. We as humans tend to imagine ourselves as a fantasy version inspired by people we follow and see. While there is no harm in that, but more often than not we are not even close to that version in our real lives. So, it is very essential to understand this difference and know your real self and be comfortable with it. This is applicable in all areas of our lives, but right now I am talking about your sense of styling and products you use.
Step 2: Collect all your stuff together
The next step is to collect all your clothing, accessories and shoes in one place. Empty out your wardrobe completely and bring out each and every item from it. The pile may look overwhelming large but remember it will get worse before it gets better.
Step 3: Declutter your items
The next step is to declutter items from the pile that you just created. This may be the most time-consuming part of all, but it is necessary. If you want your wardrobe to function for you, then you need all the items to serve you well. As discussed above, if there are items in your wardrobe which are for your fantasy self and you never reach out for them, then they are essentially taking up precious real estate in your wardrobe without serving you.
You can use the Keep/Trash/Donate method to get started with decluttering. I already have a blog post written on this linked here and you can read to through it for more details. Make sure all the items you are left with post decluttering are the ones that you actually use and love and realistically fit into your current life.
Step 4: Create a clean slate
Once the above step is done you are now left with all the items that you need to finally organize. But before getting to the organizing bit, clean up and disinfect your wardrobe. This is something which rarely gets done in homes because our wardrobes are always “working” (basically holding all our items). The opportunities to have your wardrobe completely empty are rare. So now that you have it, grab a wipe and clean it up.
Step 5: Categorize your remaining stuff
Now finally the fun part – organizing. I bet you are now tempted to go to the store and grab all sorts of organizers and what not that we have in the market these days. But wait! You don’t need all of them or any. Yes, they are quite useful, and I use them as well. But you don’t need them at the beginning. First categorize your items – shoes, bags, clothes etc. Then sub-categorize them further – for example clothing can have groups like pajamas, loungewear, T-shirt, Jeans etc. Once you have all the subcategories sorted, then place them back in the wardrobe neatly once section at a time where you find it convenient.
Step 6: Get suitable organizers and bins
This is not over. Once you have all the items neatly back into the wardrobe, live with the wardrobe for 2-3 weeks. See how you are finding the arrangement, make tweaks as you go. Notice the things you often reach out and put back, and how easy it is do so. Once you have lived with the arrangement for quite some time, then you can decide on investing in some organizers if required.
For example, you may be reaching out for your T-Shirts every now and then and they are file folded and stacked on top of each other which makes it difficult to grab the one which is the lowest and you end up wearing the T-Shirts which are at the top. So, it could be a good idea to invest in some cloth organizers which will be able to stack the T-Shirts vertically, and you can easily grab and put back all T-Shirts as you like.
How to Maintain an Organized Wardrobe
The above steps are definitely not a one-time activity if you want to always have an organized wardrobe. You will definitely need to keep up with it. While the first step is the most difficult and time consuming, it gets progressively easier. You just need to be mindful of a 3 basic things:
- Avoid impulse shopping. Buy items that you will actually use. Remember the fantasy-desire vs Actual-desires notion.
- Follow the One-In-One-Out rule. If you get something new into the house, make sure to get something out as well. Do not treat your house as a bottomless well.
- Every six months assess your items and declutter accordingly. If you’ve not used an item the last 6 months, most likely you don’t need it. This of course does not apply to the seasonal items.
Summary
It is honestly the simplest way you can start to simplify your time – Just organize your wardrobe! Once you have this aspect of your life in order, you’ll feel more confident and more in control over your physical space as well as financials (most impulse shopping end up in the wardrobe unused!). And slowly but surely the organization habits will trickly into other aspects of your life too. Happy Organizing!