Feisty Girl

In my previous post, I wrote about de-cluttering that closet in your house that tends to collect stuff from all over the place. In this post, I’ll write about what to do with everything that’s left.

You should be left with 3 piles of stuff to put back in your closet.

• Sentimental
• Rarely Used
• Frequently Used

Try to sort the sentimental stuff into one of the two other categories (rarely or frequently used). Once you’ve taken a second look at your stuff, you might decide that some of it still needs to be either donated, trashed or relocated to another part of the house where it can be reunited with other like items:

• linens
• seasonal items
• cleaning products
• luggage
• winter coats
• summer clothes
• etc.

Once you’re sure that everything you have left really does belong in this closet, take a look at the layout of your closet and assess whether or not your current setup is going to meet your needs. 

If this is the closet where you’ve decided to keep winter coats and holiday decor, then having a closet rod and one shelf might be the perfect setup. But if this is the closet where you’re going to keep stuff for a new baby, having only one shelf could be a problem. Little clothes don’t hang down, and you could be left with a lot of dead space in your closet. The opposite could also be true – you might need to purchase or rearrange some shelves to get the configuration that works best for your stuff.

I have a coat closet with no coats in it, so I added an additional shelf at mid-level, and put my fabric in bins on the floor, and my sewing machine on the middle shelf. It’s too heavy for the top shelf, but too valuable to be taking up floorspace since you can’t stack stuff on top of it. Lighter items go on the top shelf.

Not very handy? Wire cube storage works great for lots of little things.  I’ve used it to create shelves for my fabric and sewing supplies, and I’ve also seen it used in a kid’s closet to add extra space for shoes, clothes and toys, without the hassle of hanging shelves.

In general, as you put your stuff back in the closet, remember to keep the more frequently used things within easy reach, and put the less frequently used things up high or down low.

Keep like with like – use clear plastic bins or pull out baskets to hold smaller items together: all the socks, decorations, etc. If your containers aren’t see-through, try to use ones with labels so that you can easily find what you’re looking for.

There is always going to be some trial & error when it comes to reorganizing. If you find yourself not putting things away, or always getting out the step stool to reach items on the top shelf, then step back and try to look for a different configuration that will work better for you. If you don’t create a home for your stuff, you will end up with clutter again in the future. This is particularly good to remember when teaching your kids how to pick up after themselves – if they don’t know where to put something, chances are, it’s not going to be put away. Be sure that you create spaces where your kids know what belongs where, and everything that should be in easy reach for them is. If a coat hook is too high for a child, that coat is going to end up on the floor. The same goes for the closet – if all the clothes rods are at adult height, guess who’s going to be hanging all the clothes. I mention this because we are creatures of habit – and if we don’t design our storage for the way we use it, we’re not going to use it!

Hopefully these guidelines will help you build a happier closet. If you have specific trouble spots – please leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to help you find a solution!