Last week we managed to tackle bed side tables, drawers & the tops of dressers. But now, we’re going to go inside the dresser & start the handle the clothes in your closet.

Clothes tend to be the trickiest items to sort through, the main reason being that people have a tendency to hold on to them far too long for a variety of reasons.

Sometimes it’s seasonal clothes, sometimes it’s something you wore once & swear to yourself you’ll wear it again, sometimes it’s clothes that no longer fit (which you SWEAR you’ll fit into once your new workout plan & diet takes hold), but in reality those times frequently don’t come. Buying more clothes ends up adding to the clogged clothing situation, which makes storing clothes more difficult.

So as you go through your drawers & closet, employ the six month rule: aside form seasonal clothing (like sweaters and jackets), if you haven’t worn it is six months, it’s time to donate or toss it.

With that said, you’ll need two bins or bags-one for donations, and one for trash. You’ll also need a clean cloth and a cleaner as well.

Let’s start with the drawers:

  • First, open your drawer & neatly empty it on to a clean spot on the bed or floor.
  • Start to sort through your items & organize the clothes into keep, donate & throw away piles. Remember, the rule of thumb is if you haven’t worn it in 6 months, it’s probably time to donate or throw away.
  • Once you do that, place the donate & throw away into their proper receptacles.
  • Now that you’ve got your keep pile sorted out, grab your clean cloth & cleaner and gently wipe out your drawer.
  • Once those are done, replace the items back into the drawer & repeat for the rest of your drawers.

Once you’ve tackled our dresser drawers, it’s time to move onto the closet, which is going take a bit more work than the drawers.

  • The clothes may be the easiest part to tackle. Much in the same way you’d do with the drawers, start to remove your clothes off the (from left to right) rack & lay them flat on the bed, but do them in small sections. Again, sort the clothes into their three sections.
  • In this instance, once you sort out the piles that are going, reintegrate the items you’re keeping back onto the rack, and slide it to the left, away from the items you haven’t yet sorted through.
  • Repeat this step until you complete your closet rack is now pared down.

Now that you’ve tackled your clothes on your rack, next week we’re literally going to go high & low in your closets-the top shelf and the bottom of your closet.