There are five rules I strictly adhere to when organizing my own or someone else’s closet.

These tips will help you get your own closet in order and provide you with a closet full of clothes you absolutely love!

By downsizing your closet, you’ll be able to get dressed faster and easier, find more outfit ideas and options, and never say “I have nothing to wear” again.

5 Tips for Organizing Your Closet

#1. If You Haven’t Worn It in a Year, Get Rid of It

Clothes and accessories that you don’t wear are taking up valuable real estate in your closet.

In addition, those items are providing visual clutter that you have to sift through every-single-day while trying to get dressed.

Go through you closet and realistically assess every item. If you haven’t worn it in a year, throw it out or donate it.

There are a number of items that we have a hard time parting with, but once you do, you won’t miss them. I promise!

Here are some of the most popular offenders invading our closets:

Prom dresses, bridesmaid gowns, and wedding dresses. Sure, when you bought that bridesmaid gown they told you that you could wear it again…but no one ever does. The fabrics scream “bridesmaid dress” no matter how you accessorize it and isn’t suitable for anywhere else but a wedding. Toss it into the donation box.
Clothes you are holding on to for sentimental reasons (ie. a first date, rehearsal dinner outfit, etc.). Give them a hug then put in the donation box.
Garments that need to be hemmed or altered. Remove them from your closet and either donate or take them to a tailor. Don’t allow them back in your closet until they are wearable
Clothes with stains, tears, missing buttons, or signs of wear. There is no upside to keep in items that are worn out. If you can’t fix them, remove them from your closet. If you can fix them, remove them and don’t put them back in the closet until they are repaired.
Garments that don’t fit properly. We all have items that we thought looked good in the fitting room only to get home and realize they fit funky - the zipper may buckle, the jeans give you a wedgie, or the blouse feels like you could bust out if it like the Hulk. Don’t let those clothes take up space. Donate them.
Fat clothes or thin clothes. How many of us have clothes for when we gain or lose weight? Those clothes are helping you today when you are trying to get dressed. Only fill your closet with clothes that fit you now.
Remove all clothes that don’t fit your current lifestyle. Maybe you had a career and now you’re a stay-at-home mom. Perhaps you were a college student and now you’re a career gal. Whatever your current situation, make sure your closet is only filled with clothes that match your life right now. If you’re spending your days at the playground you don’t need power suits in your closet. And alternately, if you are spending your days rubbing elbows with the higher-ups, you don’t need that Spring Break 2017 Miami Beach t-shirt anymore.
Clothes you don’t feel good in. Maybe you have a designer shirt you spent a lot of money on or a dress that looked so cute in the window. But, no matter how many times you try them on, for some reason you don’t feel good in them. We all have clothes we don’t feel good in. The best thing to do when you run across these items is donate them to someone else. You deserve to have a closet only filled with clothes you love to wear.

Go through your ENTIRE closet and remove the items you haven’t worn. This includes coats, swimsuits, jewelry, shoes, belts, scarves, and underwear.

Now that we covered what to get rid of, the next four tips will help you organize the clothes that are remaining.

#2. Keep Like Things Together

You might see an outfit you love on our favorite influencer, on a mannequin, or shown as an outfit in the store. You take it home and hang it in your closet with those pieces together so that you can easily duplicate the outfit.

However, by grouping clothes by outfit you aren’t allowing the clothes to live up to their full potential.

Instead, organize your clothes by classification rather than outfit.

AKA, keep like things together.

That means all t-shirts in one pile, jeans in another, blazers hang together, and so do dresses.

By doing this, you’ll realize that you can mix and match pieces in ways you never thought of before.

This method of organization provides hundreds of outfit ideas instead of the 10-20 you had hanging together as pre-planned outfits.

#3. From Light to Dark

How to Arrange Clothing Colors from Light to Dark

To me, there is nothing more satisfying that seeing a closet arranged from light to dark.

It makes a closet go from an ordinary wardrobe to a shopping experience each and every morning.

How to arrange clothes from light to dark

White, Pink, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Gray, Black

As I mentioned in Tip #2, arrange your clothes by classification first.

Then, within each classification arrange clothes from light to dark.

If it’s a stack of folded clothes, arrange them from light to dark starting with light at the top.

When arranging hanging items such as shirts/blouses, arrange them from left to right…light to dark.

Even if my stack of legging includes somewhat neutral shades, I still use this method. For example: 1 navy, 2 gray, and 5 black. They get sorted from light to dark.