I sing this song every January: it’s time to clean out, throw away, and straighten up my closet. A well-organized wardrobe is a joy forever — or at least for a couple of months until it becomes an unholy mess again.
Part of the exercise is deciding how best to arrange what’s left. There are several schools of thought on this scintillating topic.
STACK
This works best for shelves, so you can see what color shirts or sweaters you have. I find it less useful in drawers because I always have to dig through to find what I want — inevitably it’s on the bottom.
SCRAMBLE
When you hang everything, it can easily become a jumble of colors, lengths, and items. One school of thought is to organize everything by color, a system in which all black items — jackets, pants, skirts, tops — would be grouped together.
It seems to me that it would be harder to find something specific; have you tried this approach? My compromise is to hang similar items together, arranged by color.
ROLL
Although I often pack this way when traveling, it never occurred to me to roll things at home. Miraculously, items DO take up less space in the drawer, and now I can see what I have. Works wonders for socks, underwear, t-shirts and jeans.
CODA
As a native New Yorker, it’s no surprise that most of my clothes are black, grey, and navy regardless of where I live, with a few pieces in the offwhite/tan/khaki range tossed in. This probably explains why my occasional wild foray outside the neutral zone is often unsuccessful. Note to self: do not buy bright colors, however appealing. You’ll always reach for something else.
Keeping things neat is a constant work in progress. How about you? Is your closet beautifully organized, a hot mess, or somewhere in between?
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