Home Organizing Tips: Closet Organizing Case Study
I recently worked with a client in search of home organizing tips, specifically dealing with organizing her closets. She has two bedroom closets in her NYC apartment and is fortunate to have significant space in both of them which made the closet organizing an easier task. With the exception of some items that are in under bed bags, the majority of her summer and winter clothing is kept in the closets.
Her immediate objective in this NYC closet organizing project was to organize the clothing so that all the items that she is currently wearing are accessible and to have closet storage solutions that worked for her. One closet has 2 bars plus 2 shelves for storage while the second one has 4 shelves and space below the bottom shelf for shoe storage, luggage and a set of plastic drawers.
The first of my home organizing tips for her to was to identify how each closet would be used and decided that all work related clothing (with minor exceptions) would be assigned to the closet with the double hanging rods and all casual/weekend clothing would be stored in the closet with shelves.
As my client had already reviewed her work wardrobe, done some purging and re-organized the remaining items, no additional organizing solutions were needed. The only task that needed to be done in the work closet was to clear the shelves above the top rod of all extraneous items. Once this was done, we folded and stacked her pants according to season and then placed them on the lower shelf.
We then tackled the second closet and started by removing all of the clothing that was piled on the shelves so that it could be sorted by category (casual tops, work tops, shorts, capris, etc.). During this process, we filled a bag of clothing that didn’t fit or was no longer in style that would be donated to Goodwill.
We determined the best organizing solutions and assigned a location on the lower two shelves for each of the categories of clothing that covered the bed and determined that all tops would be easier to manage if they were in a container of some kind. We used 2 large wire baskets that were no longer being used for this purpose. While, it ultimately may be better to have smaller containers for these items, my client is going to experiment with using the large baskets to start with. We will re-assess this storage solution in a few weeks and then determine what, if any, changes are needed.
We then divided her handbags by season and placed them in their respective bins. These along with other less frequently used items were placed on the shelf above the shorts and tops.
By the end of our session, the clothing and other items in both closets was very accessible. As the long term objective is eliminate under bed storage, hang the pants for the current season and determine how best to use the remaining storage space in both closets, our first task when we meet in the fall will be to determine which of the summer clothes to keep and which to donate.