How to Organize Your Closet on a Budget
The First Step
To organize your closet, first find some paper grocery bags and mark them accordingly, things like “Take to Goodwill”, “Need to be Mended”, and “Move to other Bedroom” or any other category you might think of. Another thing which will help you organize your closet is to have a small glass or bowl to put buttons, or beads that may have fallen to the closet floor, or are so loose on your clothing you know they are going to need to be sewed back on. Now you’re ready to begin. Take each item of clothing out and decide if it is something you want to keep or not. If it is a casual item and you have not worn it in a year, chances are you can recycle it (Unless of course the reason you haven’t been wearing it is because it was buried). If it is a formal item, or an item you regularly wear even if it is only twice a year place it in a pile based on its type. In fact, as you take each item out, for those items you are going to keep sort them by type such as, pants, blouses, skirts and so on. If you are not sure if it still fits, try the item on and if it doesn’t then recycle it. As you organize your closet and come across items that need to be mended think about if you are really willing to do the mending or pay someone to do it. If not, then recycle the item. There is no sense in keeping something you know you are not going to restore so you can wear it.
The Second Step
To continue to organize your closet, the second step once you’ve gone through your clothing and recycled, and sorted by type is to assess what is left in your closet. Do you have piles of “junk,” such as old magazines, boxes of pictures, or books that you pushed into the closet to get them out of the way? Here is your chance to sort through the clutter and decide what to do with it. If you have old magazines stacked which you are keeping because there is one article you want, tear out the articles you want to keep and file them in a filing cabinet, then recycle what’s left. Do the same thing with all the other extraneous junk in your closet. Decide if you want to keep something and if not put it in the appropriate bag. Once you’ve gone through the extra storage clutter as you organize your closet look at what is left and think about where else you could store these items. For example if you have a box of books, see if you can find space on a shelf or in one of your bookcases. Do the best you can to find homes for the things which do not really belong in your clothes closet.
The Third Step
The third step as you organize your closet is to look at what is left. Things like accessories such as hats, scarves and shoes, or empty luggage. Take your empty luggage out and set it aside for the moment. Then take out any accessories and sort them as you did your clothing. Whatever you haven’t worn in a year, recycle it. Have a pair of shoes that pinch your toes and you never quite got broken in, and no longer wear? Recycle them. Here’s your opportunity to clear more clutter and make space for things you will use, or that you might wish to buy later on.
The Fourth Step
The fourth step as you organize your closet is to take a look at what you have left, and what you will need to effectively organize what is left. There are numerous creative and free or inexpensive ways to organize your closet. Do you normally keep your shoes on the floor of your closet? Why not instead purchase an inexpensive plastic vertical hanger for the back of your closet door? You know the ones with several slots for shoes. That way you’ve cleared the floor of your closet for something else such as milk crates for example to put your hats, belts and other such accessories in. Another idea is to fold your seasonal clothing and store it in your empty luggage. Is your jewelry mixed up in your bathroom drawers and on counters around your house? You can also purchase vertical hangers with several plastic slots for jewelry which will help you keep track of it and make it easy to match to your clothing as it will be right there in your closet. Don’t have enough storage space on that top shelf in your closet? Why not take two smaller plastic crates or boxes and add a long board for an additional shelf. This is just another easy and free or inexpensive way to organize your closet. Another great idea is to purchase hangers with multiple clips that you can hang 4 skirts or pairs of pants on. Many of the items mentioned here can be purchased for a dollar at your local Dollar Store, or if you don’t have one of those you can shop thrift stores and rummage sales for whatever other things you need to complete organizing your closet.
Finally you want to put everything back into your closet that you decided belonged there. Hopefully you were able to purchase whatever organizational extras you needed, or if you were lucky and/or creative you already had them in your home.
The absolute final thing you want to do is not let those bags you used sit in your bedroom. Instead do with the items whatever you decided. If you leave them sitting on your floor, a couple of things could happen. You could decide to go through them again and find yourself keeping stuff that you don’t really need to, or you could be tempted to store them in some other area of your home. Your best course of action is to dispose of those bags like they were on fire and you didn’t want them to catch the rest of your house on fire too. That way there is no temptation to do either of the above things.
Keep in mind that the secret to an organized closet is that everything has its own place. If you remember to put things back in their places once you are done with them, and resist the temptation to use your closet as a storage space to throw whatever into, then it will stay organized.
