“Clutter smothers. Simplicity breathes.”

Today, I want to talk about how it’s best to organize your closet and to start your day clutter-free. I learned this through trial and error and as a fashion designer, I love to showcase my clothes. Having worked in many shops as a weekend job, I was excited to create my own little shop at home. I used to have a lot of clothes, and a lot of other stuff that I kept in the closet.

Your wardrobe
The first category for decluttering is your closet because this is part of your everyday life. As an experienced fashion designer, I’m aware of how clothes can affect your mood. I truly believe in the importance of a wardrobe that contains garments that you love and need, organized in a way that you have a clear overview of what you have. When you open your closet in the morning, you don’t want to be overwhelmed by sifting through clothes you don’t even wear. This is such a stressful start to the day! You should feel inspired and excited to create an outfit that makes you feel great. Not to mention the amount of time it saves you not digging through the clutter and getting distracted by clothes you forgot you have. 

The most clutter happens when it’s unclear where things belong and when the location doesn’t make sense

Organize your closet
When you open or enter your closet space, you should feel inspired. And we can make that happen today! The golden rule for a clutter-free closet is that it’s divided into categories, in hanging or folded garments, and organized by color. Everything has a permanent place to live. The most clutter happens when it’s unclear where things belong and when the location doesn’t make sense.

Creating a shop
When I lived on my own for the first time, I was studying fashion in Arnhem (The Netherlands). I lived in a small studio apartment, which forced me to re-evaluate how I kept my clothes. By that time, I had worked in several shops as a weekend job and I loved that you can just browse through all the hanging garments. I wanted to copy that feeling.

Ideally, all my garments would be on hangers, so I could see everything. I folded only my gym clothes, underwear, and socks. It sounds ideal, but when you have quite some garments in a small space, the hangers get cluttered and it just doesn’t work. After a couple of months, or maybe a year, my dad came to the rescue by adding some shelves on the wall. Now I could keep some of my clothes folded. It was really like a puzzle to create space in this tiny home, but we made it work.

After graduation, I moved to Rotterdam into a two-bedroom apartment. The spare bedroom was going to be a combination of a workspace for my freelance jobs and a closet space. To me that was all connected anyway, so the clothes would not be a distraction. Compared to the Arnhem apartment, I had so much space, so I tried to create a little shop again. It still didn’t work. The rod was bending, the hangers got tangled, and soon enough I had to abandon the idea again. Now I started folding most of my garments in cabinet drawers. 

Cabinet drawers
The cabinet drawers are from Ikea, and I’m quite sure they’re still sold to this day. It had four deep drawers – I could keep a lot of my clothes in there. Back in those days, where you still had to request to become a Pinterest member, I found some great organizing hacks on this platform. One of those was a specific way of folding garments, which is known now as the KonMari method. Rather than piling clothes on top of each other, so that only the top piece is visible, the garments lay back-to-back in a single layer from the front of the drawer to the back, leaving all the items visible…just like a hanging rack! One of my best friends loves how those drawers look and she calls them Candy Drawers, as all those garments are neatly folded and therefore a pleasure to ‘browse’ through.

Candy Drawers
After that, many new apartments were part of my life. But having learned from the experiences with hanging garments in those two apartments; the Candy Drawers never parted. Now I only have the garments hanging that need a hanger like jackets, dresses, and silk and silk-like fabrics.

Generally, shirts, dresses, jumpsuits, and jackets are always on hangers

Organizing your garments on hangers
If you haven’t read my post on decluttering your wardrobe, I’d recommend starting there before continuing.
So, we’ve got this pile with the items you love and those you need. First, we’re going to divide per category. These will be underwear, socks, tops (sleeveless, T-shirts), shirts, pants, shorts, skirts, dresses, jumpsuits, sweaters, knitwear (jumpers and cardigans), and jackets.

Generally, shirts, dresses, jumpsuits, and jackets are always on hangers.
I prefer having my trousers on hangers, but my jeans are folded. Your silk and silk-like garments want to live on a hanger, regardless of their category.

Closet space
Ideally, all your garments live in your closet space and are not spread out over the apartment. When you don’t have enough closet space, your jackets are the first category that can move to a hallway closet. 

Since your closet space is empty after finishing your decluttering ritual, you can estimate where you want your clothes to live within this space. Now is also the perfect time to give the garments the attention that they need. Does it need an iron, how does it want to hang on the hanger? Act accordingly. Visually, it’s nice to look at a hanging wardrobe that has matching hangers. They will all hang nicely on the same height, and this will make a huge difference in overviewing your clothes. Both your garments and you will be happy.

Color-coded
Your dresses, jumpsuits, and probably jackets need full-length space in the closet. The garments are organized per category and then grouped by color. It’s calming, as you have less visual information to process. You can open your closet without feeling overwhelmed by all the information. The categories and colors are easier to digest as a whole, after which you can look into the specific garment.

We create a ‘rainbow’ of shades and colors

Rainbow
We start on the left side of your closet with the ‘heavy’ items; (winter) coats and cardigans, followed by dresses and jumpsuits. I like to start with dark shades and end with lighter ones, as you create a framework of dark colors on the outer edge of your closet space. This works almost like a framed artwork; it’s visually appealing to the eye. This is also why we also start with the ‘heavier’ items on the left side, followed by longer length garments, and ending with your tops.
Feel free to try what works best for you (and your closet space)!

We create a ‘rainbow’ of shades and colors, followed up by each other. When you end one category with a light shade, you start the following category with a light shade, and so on, and this creates the ‘rainbow’ of shades and colors. 

It could look like this: you start with a black wool frock coat on the left, followed by a dark grey leather coat, an army green summer parka, and end with an ecru wool blazer. Next will be cardigans – a khaki cardigan, followed by a navy heavy knit.  Then you start with a navy catsuit, a pink jumpsuit, and a white denim overall. This is followed by a white shirt dress, building up to darker shades. Your shirts and tops will start with darker shades, to light ones. Usually, I treat sleeveless tops as a separate category and start with those, followed by the rest of the shirts and tops.

Pants and skirts
As you may have noticed, I haven’t mentioned the pants or skirts category. Pants can be full-length on a hanger or folded in half. I prefer to have my pants full-length, but that doesn’t always fit in every closet. In my last apartment in China, there were these built-in wooden rods where I could fold my pants over in half. Let your closet space speak to you. This will lead to where the pants live in the closet space. It’s either after the cardigans, or most likely between dresses and shirts. When there’s a designated build-in part for trousers, they live there. As for skirts, it depends on the type of fabric as to where they will live. But most of the time it will be after the pants category.

Now I know I got you all excited about folding garments and the Candy Drawers. In my next blog post, I will give you all the details!

Remember: the best method for organizing is not to have too many items. Every time you open your closet doors, all your favorite garments are there, showing the best side of themselves to you. Doesn’t this just make you happy? 

How do you feel when you think about an organized closet?

Thank you for reading.
We’re in this together.
~