Closet Wardrobe Organization

I use my closet every day, well, except the days where I’m a total bum and lounge around in my pajamas. As I built out my capsule wardrobe, I wanted a way to keep my articles of clothing in order with structure and intention.

I have several goals that I aim for my closet to accomplish:

• Hold my articles of clothing when not being worn. Some articles need to ensure they’re not wrinkled in storage.
• See what’s available and be able to easily get each item.
• Make folding laundry fast/easy.

Each article lives on a Hanger or in a Drawer, and items are organized into these places for particular reasons.

Hangers

For visual consistency and spacing, I like to use wooden hangers all of the same brand/size. I just get a bunch from IKEA because they’re cheap, and when I need more they’re easy to just pick up from the store or online.

• T-shirts: Yes, I hang up my t-shirts. I find it tedious to fold them, and having all the colors visible makes it a lot easier to grab the one I want. If I had them on a shelf or in the drawer, I’d have to manage the stack every time I wanted a color that wasn’t on the top of the stack.
• Jeans/pants: Ditto. Also, helps prevent wrinkling of pants.
• Suits: Helps prevent wrinkling.
• Collared shirts: Helps prevent wrinkling.

Drawers

I use boxes to organize the inside of my drawers. I really like this, as doing this lets me just bunch up and throw in some items such as Socks, Undershirts, and Underwear so I don’t have to manage them much and they stay separate from each other without looking too messy.

I have boxes for:

• Socks: I fold the openings of each pair to each other and just shove them into a box.
• Undershirts: No folding. Just bunch them together in a box. Wrinkles don’t matter, and they’re all generic enough where I don’t need to spend time looking and deciding what color to get.
• Underwear: No folding. Again, bunch them into a box. Wrinkles don’t matter.
• Lounging clothes: I don’t need to do much here, as selection doesn’t generally matter to me. A quick fold and then shoving them into boxes works good enough.
• Shorts: Color selection is needed when grabbing these from the drawers, so I want to be able to see each of them clearly. But they take a very minor amount of space, so having them in a larger box gives me a chance to easily rummage through them and select one for a warm summer day. For shorts I have, wrinkles are not a factor, so there doesn’t need to be much work done in folding them.
• Sweaters: Wrinkles are a non-factor here as well, but they can sometimes take up space, especially for cotton sweaters. For thinner items like merino wool sweaters, they’ll be easier to manage and store.

Everything in its place

Having everything belong somewhere reduces my cognitive load from wondering where to put things on laundry days and where to find things each day. It’s like MVC for your clothes: you know where things belong, so you don’t waste time thinking about which box to put things in or get things out from.