Our primary bedroom has a decent size closet. When we purchased the house, it just had your typical wire shelving and rods. Nothing fancy. One of the first things we did after moving in was replace the wire shelving with an Elfa system from The Container Store. I had been lusting over these systems since I bought my first house 8 years prior, but just wasn’t in the budget. I convinced my husband that an Elfa system was essential for t his closet. He bought it!

Fast forward three years, and while this system has been great, we were at a point where we really needed to purge, clean and reorganize. I like feeling like I’m “shopping” when I get ready each day, and instead, I was dreading it. The closet floor was cluttered with things that didn’t belong, our drawers were over-stuffed making it difficult to find what we needed or just see what we had. This is embarrassing, but here are a few before photos.

Now let’s get started…

Step 1: Prepare

Before you get started, grab a box for donation items, a box for items you can sell and then some garbage bags. You will want to throw away things that are damaged or stained that cannot be sold or donated. Staying organized while you organize is key. You’ll also want to have something to keep a list of items you need to replace or things you realize you might need for your wardrobe. So grab a pad and pen or use your phone, just have something handy to jot these things down so you don’t have to try to remember.

You’ll also want to have some organizational items on hand like hangers, bins and drawer organizers. Here is what I used in my closet:

Step 2: Remove everything

You really don’t know what you have and how much you have until you lay it all out in front of you. We started with my husband’s side of the closet. We removed all of his hanging items and put them on the bed.

He had 30 pairs of pants, 60 shirts, 18 pairs of shorts and 28 t-shirts. This is just insane! What person really needs 30 pairs of pants?!? We went through every piece of clothing and sorted it to our boxes or trash bags. He ended up pairing his wardrobe down to 15 pairs of pants (which is still a hellova lot, if you ask me!), 37 shirts, 8 shorts and 11 t-shirts. He did cut his wardrobe in half, which I think is pretty impressive.

Next was my turn. It really gives you perspective on how many things you have when it’s localized like this!

Step 3: Clean

Since the closet is empty, now is a good time to give it a good wipe down. it amazes me how dusty things can get! I just used an all-purpose cleaner and microfiber cloth.

Step 4: Load

Now comes the fun part. Let’s start putting things back.

hanging and shelves

For hanging clothes, make sure you hang all your shirts facing the same way. Then I like to hang shirts together and in color order, ROYGBIV, white, gray, black and group by sleeve length. (For example: Red: sleeveless, short sleeve, long sleeve, sweater/sweatshirt; Orange: sleeveless, short sleeve, long sleeve, sweater/sweatshirt; so on and so forth.)

Speaking of hangers, let’s talk hangers. I love using these slim, velvet hangers. Your clothes do not slip and slide off of them. They really do save so much space in your closet. And they just look so chic. Whether you like this type or hanger or not, I highly suggest using the same hanger throughout your closet to keep it looking neat and pretty.

My husband likes to hang all of his pants. We hung his dress and golf pants on the built-in pants hanger under his shirts and his jeans on these pants hangers.

Pro Tip:

Make sure to hang pants and jeans with the crotch of the pants facing the wall. It just looks neater and cleaner!

For jeans, I hang from lighter wash to darker wash.

His pullovers were hung in color order, of course, over the jeans and again, all facing the same direction.

Shoes were neatly placed back on the shelves and his hats (which he also purged dramatically, thank goodness!) were neatly placed on the shelves above his shoes.

I prefer to fold my jeans and stack them on the shelves. It makes it feel more boutique-like for me! I also fold my sweaters and sweatshirts. And if you don’t have one of these handy clothes folders, where have you been? #addtocart They make your folded clothes more uniform and it’s just lots of fun! I use it for my jeans, sweaters, sweatshirts and t-shirts.

Shoes are grouped together by style: tennis shoes and sneakers on top, flats, boots, heels and sandals on the bottom. Next to the shoes I have my skirts and dresses and then jackets and cardigans. I have a little bit of hanging space under my shirts where I keep my tanks and robes.

drawers

Now for the drawers. Since we, luckily, have a good size closet, we do not have a dresser and are able to keep all of our clothes in our closet. I made sure to add plenty of drawers when customizing our Elf system for this very reason.

As always, like items were grouped together and everything was folded very neatly. It’s best to “file” your clothes so you can see everything you have instead of stacking where then you have to dig down to find what you are looking for and then the drawer becomes disheveled.

Top Left: pajama pants neatly folded and filed.

Top Middle: work out tanks and shirts folded and filed. Use drawer organizers to keep them grouped together better. I used these from Ikea but you can also get them on Amazon if you do not have an Ikea near you. Then sports bras rolled and filed.

Top Right: boxers, filed. (I could have gone a step farther and color coded these…) For these, I only used the Elf drawer dividers to keep them organized and separated.

Middle Left: socks are rolled and placed in these dividers. Athletic socks are on the left and dress socks on the right.

Middle Middle: t-shirts, folded and filed. (I used the folder for these as well! Aren’t they so pretty?!)

Middle Right: shorts, folded and filed. Here too, I just used the Elfa drawer organizers.

Bottom Left: Again, socks rolled and stored in these dividers. Athletic socks on the left, cozy socks in the middle, and boot socks to the right.

Pro Tip:

Don’t fold your socks into each other where you wrap one sock around the other and make a sock ball. This will stretch out your socks. Instead, either stack them and then fold them in half (which is good for dress socks, tube socks or crew socks) or tuck one into the other and then fold in half (which is good for no-show socks).

Bottom Middle: t-shirts, folded and filed.

Bottom Right: leggings and shorts, folded and filed once again using these organizers.

Step 5: Style

Of course, you need to make every space pretty, right? :) Make sure to add a bit of decor and styling to your closet to really give it that boutique-ish look. And if your closet is big enough, add a chair. You’ll thank me later!

Whether you have a large or small closet, you can use these tips and tricks to get your closet organized. Trust me, you feel so much better and will be so excited about getting ready every day since everything will have a place and you can easily see all that you have! I hope this brought you some closet organization motivation!

xo, Kristin