Introducing a few simple habits into your routine is a great way to keep a tidy wardrobe. And did you know that having a tidy wardrobe can also help with your personal style?
So today I am sharing wardrobe organisation tips and habits that I have done for years that have helped me to keep a tidy wardrobe, and in turn, have helped me work on my personal style.
If you put these things into place today, I can assure you, that your wardrobe organisation will be 10x what it used to be!
You can watch the full video here, or read the post below.
Habits for a Tidy Wardrobe
What’s coming up:
- Everything has a home (the 10-minute tidy!)
- Leave space between items
- Use boxes and dividers
- Take time to fold
- Hang clothes the same way
- Bonus tip!
Everything has a home
Maybe you’ve heard this before, but I’m going to share some further practical tips. So everything you own must have a home. That means every item you own has its own dedicated place to be put away.
And then it needs to be put back in the same place every time!
Items that I find often don’t get put back in their place include shoes, handbags, jewellery and half-worn clothes.
These things tend to accumulate in piles around the bedroom or flung over the side of chairs. So giving extra attention to these areas is a good idea.
When everything has a home, take your time to actually put things back in their correct places. Often this only means an extra 10 minutes before bed every night to straighten up the room and ensure everything is back in its place.
This 10 minutes before bed is a habit I’ve adopted and I do it without even thinking anymore.
On the topic of everything having a home, I think the one mistake that most people make, me included, is forgetting to have a home for those half-worn items.
So these are the clothes that don’t feel dirty enough to go in the washing basket but don’t feel clean enough to go back in the wardrobe. Often these items end up flung over a chair or in a pile on the floor.
So, I’ve got 3 suggestions for this. Option number one is having a basket or a dedicated draw in your wardrobe for your half-worn clothes to go. Another idea is having a hook somewhere inside your wardrobe or on the back of your bedroom door, where you can hang those items.
And the last idea is to have a separate clothes rail in your bedroom if you have the room to do so. You could also use this rail to plan your outfits for the following day.
I love this bamboo clothes rail from Amazon, to keep things looking clean and aesthetic in your bedroom.
Leave space between items
The 2nd habit for a tidy wardrobe is to aim to create space between items in your wardrobe.
Leaving a void between your items is great so that things can breathe in your wardrobe, but it’s also more visually appealing. And when things are more visually appealing, you tend to try to keep them that way.
When you have things stuffed in right to the brim, it tends to be harder to maintain tidiness and it’s also a bit more overwhelming to the eye.
I heard this decluttering/organising tip years ago that has always stuck with me, and unfortunately, I have forgotten who said it, however, the tip was to aim to always leave one empty shelf or cupboard in an area that you have organised. And while I don’t actually have a spare shelf or drawer in my wardrobe, I do live by this rule in my kitchen, and I love having an empty shelf in a kitchen cupboard, knowing that I don’t need to fill it.
Seeing that void of space is really calming to me, and it makes me want to maintain that calm and tidy experience throughout my whole kitchen. So in my bedroom, I just try to leave some space between items to get the same effect.
Use boxes and dividers
The 3rd habit for a tidy wardrobe is likely something that you have heard of before as well, but it’s my go-to organising skill to maintain tidiness in my home and that is to use boxes and dividers to separate items into sections.
This is particularly good for baby clothes, I use the Ikea dividers to separate my son’s clothes, but in my wardrobe, I use anything I can get my hands on. I’ve often found boxes and containers in charity shops, I also re-purpose cardboard boxes from things I have bought.
I find anything bought from Apple comes in a really sturdy box and I often use these boxes to section things off in my house.
The reason why having things in sections helps to keep things tidy is that it comes back to that first tip of ‘everything needing to have a home’. When you have a specific container or box to put things back into, you tend to actually put them back where they belong, rather than everything being mixed up in one drawer or one shelf.
Take time to fold
The 4th habit for a tidy wardrobe is taking the time to fold things nicely. This is something that I started doing after I got my first retail job.
And when I say take time, folding doesn’t have to be a timely experience, like it doesn’t have to take precious time out of your day, and once you start doing it, it becomes so fast, and again it becomes second nature to fold things nicely.
So I will share a few of my go-to folding tips. The first comes from the Marie Kondo folding method, and that’s kind of to fold everything in thirds.
The way I see this is that it makes things compact, and it gives a nice clean edge on one side of the clothes you can use that clean edge to face forwards so that everything appears neat and tidy. You can then easily stack things side by side in your containers so that you can see everything you have at a glance.
I use this in some areas of my wardrobe but not all. I’ve worked out what works for me, and you should do the same.
My knits and jumpers get folded like I would fold them working in retail. I hold the jumper by my pointer finger and thumb up by the shoulders. I then use my second finger to flick the arms backwards, I then lay it down on a surface and fold it in half. Sometimes depending on where it’s going, I even fold it in half again. This means I have a nice clean edge on one side to be seen from the front of my wardrobe.
Hang clothes the same way
The 5th habit for a tidy wardrobe is to hang your clothes facing the same way in the wardrobe. So for me, I have all my clothes that are hung up front facing to the left, so when I flick through them it’s easy to see what’s what, and it looks neat and tidy.
If you are left-handed, you might want to make all your clothes face to the right so that you can browse through your clothes using your left hand.
Bonus tip: Store out-of-season items
Okay, so time for the bonus wardrobe organisation tip! Store out-of-season items away when you’re not using them. Therefore in winter, all of your summer items will be stored away and vice-versa.
When I initially heard of this concept from Signe from the YouTube channel Use Less, I thought that it sounded like a lot of unnecessary work. But I decided to test it out. And once I did, I was hooked.
Storing out-of-season items has so many benefits, not only to keep your wardrobe organised in a nice way, but also helps you actually to go through your clothes regularly and know what you have, which in turn helps a lot with developing your personal style.
I honestly think that doing this has helped me learn so much about my personal style because I don’t close my wardrobe and forget about things. Going through my seasonal pieces a few times a year helps me keep on track of things, and helps me keep an organised and tidy wardrobe.
Did you enjoy these tips? Do you have any to add? Please comment below.
For more from me, you can watch my YouTube videos here. Thanks!
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