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Style > Fashion

Outfit Ready: How to Organize Your Wardrobe

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at UCD chapter.

Is keeping your closet organized your goal? For many of us, our 2025 goal is to dress nice while keeping our closet clutter-free. To keep our closet organized we tend to wear anything we find at first glance in order to not make a mess while looking for specific things. Trying to pick a good outfit takes time, as well as looking for the ideal outfit pieces. Alternatively, we clean and organize our closets, but when it comes to getting ready we make it messy anyways, trying to find that one shirt we know we hung up only to find it wasn’t where we thought it would be. Here are some tips to keep your closet organized no matter the circumstance.

Step 1: Clean

The cleaning process—that is, the moment you can take everything away—is important. You can make a piles of pants, shirts, dresses, sweaters, and more. After everything is separated, choose what you would like to keep and what you would like to donate. Sometimes we pile up items that we don’t like or just do not use. After, you can fold clothing that needs to be folded (as a category), and leave the items that will be hung up with the hanger. Once you have your clothing ready, get your cleaning supplies and clean your closet. Dust piles up, which can get your clothing dirty. 

Step 2: Know what you have 

Once you have a clean closet, you have to know what you have as well as where everything will be. Keeping everything you have documented is something that will help your closet stay clean. 

Photo albums: We can use our phones to take pictures of everything in our closet. You can create multiple albums, each for a different type of item; some for tops, others for bottoms, or one for jackets. Once you have everything on photos, you can slot in pictures of outfits. For instance, you start in order by picking a shirt. Then you can pick other items it may match with, such as accessories, and take a picture to reference to outfit ideas. That way you know what you can use for anytime you find yourself in a rush. Once you have everything in your phone, you can avoid messing up your freshly organized closet! 

Polaroids: Being able to use polaroids to document your wardrobe is a fun activity. You can print pictures of every clothing item you have in your closet after setting them into sections. Then, you can collect the pictures and have them organized in a place like a box with sections. Sections for tops, bottoms, dresses, and sweaters. If you’re able to also have outfits printed that would be helpful. Make the best outfit for each item in your closet. After doing these steps, when you purchase more clothing you can take a picture of the item and the many ways you can use it. That way you know it’s there, when you need help styling you will have your own pictures of inspiration.

Anna Schultz-College Hat Flat Lay Cropped
Anna Schultz / Her Campus

Step 3: Make it Pretty!

You want to make your closet look pretty. To make it easy to use, you want to have sections in your closet. Your first section can be hoodies. Hang up your hoodies in a color-coded order, set from darkest to lightest. Then, you can continue with the sweatshirt section from darkest to lightest. For the tops section, it will be a little different. While organizing your tops from darkest to lightest colors you will hang them up from long sleeves to short sleeve, sleeveless, and so on. After hanging your tops you can continue with bottoms, jeans, and pants. You can separate them based on their style—for instance, straight-leg jeans, then boot-cut. Once your section for bottoms is set, you can continue with hanging up skirts from longest to shortest, and darkest to lightest colors. After the skirt section you can use the same method for dresses. If you have scarfs or other accessories you can make similar sections. 

These are some tips that can help minimize your wardrobe. The pictures you took on your phone or polaroid camera helps you not move things around in your closet after you just organized it. You will easily be able to choose your picture, find the section in your closet by color you want to find, to make your outfit of the day. Remember to dress with what makes you feel comfortable and powerful—that’s one of the first steps to making every day feel like a good day.

Rocio Luna Ayala is currently a 3rd year International Relations undergraduate. Surrounding herself around women empowerment to support each other is important.