Because the closet is so small (and I am required to share it), I’ve developed the following strategy:
- Store out-of-season clothing somewhere else. Twice a year, I make certain all my out-of-season clothes have been washed or dry cleaned, and I move them to the upstairs guest room closet. I then move my in-season clothes downstairs to the master bedroom closet. While this does take a couple hours on a Saturday twice a year, it provides me with a great opportunity to purge. As I am moving clothes, I evaluate garments and shoes and always have several things I can donate. But the bottom line here is, if I don’t use it regularly then it goes upstairs in the guest room closet.
- Make use of every inch of space. On the back of the door, we hung a tie/belt rack so that Matt could hang his ties and we both could hang our belts. There was one wall that was simply dead space, so Matt put in some narrow shelves for sweaters and such. On the opposite wall, there were bars for hanging clothes up high and down low, so Matt installed a long shelf in-between and up high, so now I have space for shoes.
- Strategically hang things together. Some people like to pair outfits together while others place like items or like colors together; I do a hybrid. There are certain outfits that stick together, and they all go in one location. The rest of my items I group together by type, then color, so all my tops are hung together and then in color order starting with the lightest and then going to the darkest. This helps when I am putting together an outfit, and it also helps prevent sublimation of dyes, which occurs when light garments are stored with dark garments and nitrogen gas causes dark dyes to redeposit on light garments.
