You’ve decided your closet is too full.

Or you can’t buy clothes because you’re not honestly sure what you already have.

Or you renovated the bedroom, so clothes are here, there and everywhere.

Or your closet has become the “I don’t know what to do with this. So I’ll put it in the closet … for now” place. But you never quite get back to it for whatever reason.

Or it’s Springtime and you’re ready to move out the winter clothes and move in with warm weather clothes!

Four Good Reasons to Reorganize This Week

Create more space for what you wear frequently and you won’t be saying “I thought I had a red shirt to go with these pants — where is it?”

You’ll cut down on ironing time. (If your closet is jam packed, you’ve created more ironing.) You’ll make room for new clothes.

You’ll get ready faster.

You’ll be happier when you get up in the morning and when you go to sleep at night; your closet is how you want it to be and that’s lifted your mood.

10 Tips to Let Go Easily

Next time you hang up something, look at two items of clothing to the left and right of what you just hung up. Are these still keepers? This is a bit-by-bit way to get through your closet.

If you decided to give away clothing, which organization would you give to?  It’s far easier to let go of belongings if you consider ahead of time which organization to support.

Which friend will tell you honestly how your clothing looks on you?

Not sure if you want to give it up? Put it on “probation.” This is a separate part of your closet or different colored hangers. Let them hang around for awhile until you make a decision, but separate them so you know which items are not yet permanent.

How frequently do you wear each item? When you reorganize, give yourself easiest access to the clothing you wear the most often so you’re “fishing” less.

Does it still fit and look good? If the answer is that it will fit when you lose weight, if you’re actively involved in weight loss or exercise today, then keep it. If this is a future plan, balance the space with how easy it is to find what you wear daily. At least move those clothes out of your everyday space.

How long as this item been in the mending pile? If it’s been there for more than a month or two, do you wear it often enough to keep it?

How many items have only one other item they go together with? If it’s only one or two, are these outside your typical color set? Are you keeping them because you paid good money, but maybe don’t really love them? Who else might love them as much as you thought you would?

Have you changed jobs or lifestyle recently? I worked in corporate for years, wearing suits, then dresses, then we went business casual. Now I work on my own and I’m often in even more casual clothing. I kept a few suits and dresses for presentations or conference wear. I kept most of the business casual/casual because that’s what I wear most. But I didn’t need to keep the closetful of suits and dresses because if I ever them again, styles will have changed.

Keep a “donate” bag on your closet floor. When you try on something in the future and don’t like it as much anymore, drop it into the bag. An easy way to keep up with culling out our old favorites we’d like to let go now.

Tags: ADD meditation gratitude relaxation, closet, downsizing, Harmony at Home, simplify

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 6th, 2010 at 9:09 am and is filed under Downsizing Dilemmas- Solved, Harmony at Home, Next Chapter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.