Do you come home from school or work, change, and just toss your clothing on your closet floor? Do you see a pile of sweaters, leggings, jeans, gym clothes, shirts, and fancy tops that you need to iron before wearing because of all the wrinkles? See a mix of summer and winter clothing? Well, this means it’s time to reorganize that closet!
It can be days, weeks or even several months until we decide to organize our closet… but sometimes we just clean it in such a rush that it doesn’t even help us feel that our items are organized. Why? Well maybe because the next day we see our clothing tumbling down on our heads! Okay, maybe that was a bit of an exaggeration!
Now, we all realize that at times we have to clean out our closets…. but when? How late is too late? Firstly, as winter is in full swing, it would make sense to organize our winter clothing such as jackets, sweaters, scarves etc. However, with our busy schedules of classes, assignments, midterms, exams, work and so on; it may be difficult to motivate ourselves to reorganize our closet.
Thus, the first step towards cleaning out your closet is – MOTIVATION. As mentioned before, you may have come to the conclusion that your closet needs to be cleaned out, but still can’t get yourself to do it. However, the key is to motivate and commit yourself to reorganize the mess into a clean, organized, and easy-to-navigate closet for the next three months! It is indeed a great technique when reorganizing, because focus is what keeps your mind running.
Next, you need to make sure that what you have in your closet is actually something for keeps. For example, if you’ve had that pair of jeans lying on the floor of your closet which you’ve never worn for some odd reason… i.e. it makes you look bulgy on the side; then why keep it?! Put it aside to give to someone else who may like it. Or, another way to empty out your closet is to donate the clothing around your community. Apparently, females usually wear only 25% of what is in their closet. Where is the other 75%? Let’s see – it is lying somewhere in that closet! Anyways, it’s an important tip to always make sure to keep the items which you actually like or wear in your closet instead of just keeping items which will never be touched again.
So now that you have motivation, and have decided what to keep and not to keep, you need to envision a clean organized space where all your clothes are organized. This becomes a quick process once you have let go of the items that aren’t really needed – trust me, there are plenty of items I threw out over the weekend while I was rearranging my closet! I realized that keeping tops I hadn’t worn in two years or never was pointless!
You also need to ask these questions when rearranging your wardrobe:
- Do these pants/shirts fit me?
- Is it comfortable?
- Is this a ‘sexy’ outfit which I would regret throwing out?
- Is this over worn? Under worn?
- Are there irremovable food stains or such on this? (Eeks! This should have been thrown out a while ago!)
- Will I ever wear this?
There will be a huge dramatic change once you have finished reorganizing a closet that hasn’t been cleaned in months! Seriously, these steps are pretty simple and make a difference in your mind. That feeling of peacefulness once you realize you can actually find your clothing much quicker! This also helps you decide which outfit to wear each day instead of that feeling of disappointment where you say to yourself “I don’t have any nice clothes”, when you actually have tons of nice clothing hiding somewhere in your closet, undiscovered until you hunt it down!
Hopefully these quick and easy steps bring attention to the importance of cleanliness and organization of your individual space. It definitely helps you mentally, with your mind being at ease when you realize you can easily find everything in your closet, as well as physically – not spending half an hour daily looking for an outfit!