With winter officially behind us, now is the perfect time to clean out your closet. Re-evaluating your wardrobe after a certain season (e.g. winter) makes cleaning out your closet much less daunting. May is graduation season which means people may be moving for work or school. It is essential to clean out your closet prior to moving so that you declutter what you don’t want and make room for something new. This blog post will provide you with practical tips for tackling your closet!
1. Break down your work into sections
Breaking down your work into sections is extremely important to prevent you from becoming overwhelmed and giving up on the idea of cleaning/decluttering. I recommend breaking down your wardrobe by season or by sections such as tops, trousers, jackets.
1a. Breakdown by season
Focusing on your clothes by what season you wear them is my favorite way of cleaning out my closet. For example, I like to go through my winter clothes during late spring because I know exactly what I gravitated towards all winter and what I never glanced at. For some reason re-evaluating my wardrobe after a season has ended is so much easier than picking up a random shirt and asking myself if I have worn it in the past six months. Cleaning season by season allows me to be honest about whether I wore something or see me wearing it next year.
1b. Breakdown by item
If you are cleaning out your closet in the middle of a season or have tried breaking down your closet by season and need more help, my next recommendation is to break down your wardrobe by item. This means collecting all your dresses into a pile and all your jeans into another pile. You can further subcategorize items by dividing your dresses into winter dresses, summer dresses, going-out dresses, etc. I find it helpful to look at all my items clustered together by category because then you can truly get a feel for how many basic white tees you have or how many going-out dresses you have.
2. Seriously evaluate clothing that is not your current size
As you scan your wardrobe, you may find that you are holding on to many clothes that are not your current size. These could be clothes that are too small or too big which you are keeping because you tell yourself you may fit them one day. If you are not actively trying to gain or lose weight and have not worn said clothes for the past year (or in 2019 if they are going out clothes), then I recommend parting ways with these items. This will declutter your space now and will allow you to purchase new clothes in the future as your style/sizing changes and evolves.
3. Say goodbye to clothes with rips/holes/bad stains
This may go without saying, but since quarantine, I have found myself wearing sweatpants with a little hole by the ankle, so I feel this is necessary to address. If you do not have concrete, active plans to repair certain items of clothing in your wardrobe that are damaged, this is the time to bid them farewell. I would never wear my sweatpants with the little ankle hole in public and have decided that I should have the same standards for how I dress at home. We only have one life to wear clothes so we might as well wear clothes that are not ripped or stained! It should also be noted that if you find this type of clothing in the back of your wardrobe and have not worn it over the past year, you should immediately recycle it.
Closet Organizational Tips:
- Matching hangers give your wardrobe a more uniform/organized feel. My favorite hangers are the ultra-thin black velvet hangers which are easily found anywhere.
- When hanging clean clothes in your wardrobe, always hang them on either the left or rightmost side of your wardrobe. This way you can see which clothes you gravitate towards/wear the most and which clothes slowly move to the opposite side of your wardrobe, never to be worn or washed.
Happy cleaning and organizing!
XO, Alicia
I see that having plans can make things easier. You explain this very nicely.