Reclaim Your Closet: How to Organize and color code your closet
When you walk into your closet does it make you feel excited to get dressed for the day or does it fill you with anxiety instead? It happens to the best of us: a cluttered, disorganized clothing closet. You’re busy and after a long day, you’re too exhausted to put the clothing back into order. My step-by-step guide on how to organize and color code your closet will make organizing your cluttered closet a breeze.
An unorganized closet makes it difficult to find what you need, quickly ending in frustration before you even leave the house. It can also lead to the dreaded “I have nothing to wear!” situation.
As daunting as it may feel, organizing a clothing closet is surprisingly simple! You just need to set the time aside to do it. With my simple tips and practices, you will have a beautifully organized closet. Take a deep breath and let’s jump in!
Schedule a Time
When doing any form of organizing or decluttering, I always set a date and time. Yes, put it in your calendar and set an alert on your phone! This is a simple way to hold yourself accountable. You can schedule a large block of time one day, or if you’re short on time or the task feels too daunting, schedule 30 minutes over a few days until the task is complete.
Closets, drawers, and shelves can sometimes feel like they’re bursting at the seams, making getting ready for the day seem overwhelming. Use these three simple steps to painlessly organize and reclaim your closet.
Here is an example of a closet I recently worked on before we started our process.
Pick a Starting Point
There are two ways you can start.
Large Time Frame
If you’re setting aside a large chunk of time, start by taking every single item out of your closet, even the hangers, and place it all on your bed.
Pulling out all of your clothing in one big overwhelming pile helps you see just how much stuff you have so you’re motivated to get rid of more.
Short Time Increments
If you’ve set aside 30 minutes, start with sections. Pick one section, like dresses, shirts, pants, or shoes, and pull all of that section out.
If you don’t have your clothing sorted into sections already, you might want to start with that. Move around all of your clothes so that “like” items are together. This may seem daunting, but don’t worry about colors or length. Just move all dresses together, shirts together, pants together, and so on. You can do this in 30-minute time slots as well. After you have all “like” items together then you are ready to start!
Work your way around the closet doing one section daily until you have completed your entire closet.
The Clean out stage
When sorting your clothing, whether all at once or in sections, the process is the same.
Create three areas in your space for Keep, Donate, Sell/Toss. You can use garbage bags, laundry baskets, plastic tubs, or simply designate areas on your bed or floor for these. Use my free PDF printable signs to help keep things organized.
Sort all items. Decide which pile each item should be placed in. Some key things to keep in mind when sorting.
When placing items in a category, don’t second guess your decision! Keep sorting so you don’t lose your drive!
Putting your “Keep” Pile Back
Matching hangers help streamline the look of your closet. If you can’t invest in all new hangers. I suggest swapping them around so that all of your sections have the same color hangers. For example, all tops could have white hangers and dresses could have black hangers.
When you’re ready to put your edited clothing and accessories back in their homes, put your frequently used items in the most accessible locations in your storage space. For example, if you’re a daily yoga instructor, place workout clothing in the front of the closet and more formal attire in the back. You don’t need quick access to these items during your daily routines. Save the prime real estate in your storage for your most used items!
Sort your clothing into groups, placing “like with like”.Groups can be pants, dresses, shirts, tank tops, etc…
Remember: Not everything needs to be hung up. I have color-coded stacks of tank tops on my top shelf. I group them by hue.
- Red, Pink & Orange
- White
- Gray & Black
- Green & Blue
I use these shelf dividers to make little cubbies for my t-shirts, tank tops, jeans, and leggings. You can find them on Amazon or at your local home improvement store. Visit the list of my favorite organizing products for more options.
Color-Blocking Fun!
When clothing is grouped, you can apply the color-blocking method. Designate a spot in your closet for each clothing group. Make sure to base it on what you need access to most in your daily routines.
Within each section, organize clothes based on the rainbow color spectrum. For example, group all shades of red shirts together. Here is the order of colors: black, gray, white, tan, pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.
When you come across a patterned item, group it with the most prominent color in the pattern.
Here is the organized closet after we sorted, edited, and applied the color-blocking method! Nothing new was purchased for this closet makeover, we repurposed what we already had on hand!
This beautiful and simple method makes maintaining your organizational system a breeze. You know where to go to find what you need and you know where items need to be placed when putting clothing away. This method is also helpful for children – a visual system children can see and use all by themselves. I organized my husband’s side of the closet this way, and he is still putting things back with the correct colors!
Below are a few of the top professional organizing tips to help you along the way.
I would love to hear how you organize and color code your closet. Leave me a comment below!