Quite often when I start to work with a client in their closet, they ask me this question: “What’s the right way to organize the closet?”  Admittedly, it’s a little nerve-wracking inviting a professional in to organize your clothes and most people want to get a sense of ‘where did I go wrong? I want to do it right this time.’ The truth is that most of the time closets get frustratingly disorganized a little bit at a time – ‘closet-creep’ if you will. Think about it – when you moved into where you’re living now, you probably put things in your closet with a sense of order, but over time you started shoving things in when you were in a hurry, leaving the dry cleaners bags on everything and before you knew it, you couldn’t even really see what you had in there. Or maybe, if you were rushed moving in, then you just hung things up, thinking “I’ll get back to this later and get it organized”, and then however-many years passed and… oops! You’ve got a mess on your hands.

Well, I’m here to tell you that first of all, you’re not alone. This can happen to everyone and anyone. Secondly, you might be happy (or not) to know that there’s no one ‘right way’ to organize a closet.  The best way to organize a closet is the way that works best for you, and that’s not the same for everyone.

Method #1: Organize by Category

This method is how I like to organize my closet and it’s usually what I’ll recommend to a client unless she has some other thoughts of her own on the subject. Organize by category. That is, all tops together, all pants together, and so on.

*Tops together
-First by use (cooler weather vs warmer weather). For example, turtlenecks together, shells together, etc.
-Then by color within their use, all blacks together, all navy’s together, and so on.
-Then by sleeve length within their color group (short to long sleeves)

*Pants together
-First by type (jeans, dress, casual)
-Then by color within their type
-Then by length within their color (shorts, capris, ankle, full-length)

You get the idea. This keeps repeating through all the groups – dresses, skirts, jackets, etc. Even if an item has more than one color in it, you can sort it by the dominate color. You might have one final category that has items that have so many multiple colors they can’t be easily defined – they will make up their own category.

However, this doesn’t always work for everyone because sometimes people have difficulty visualizing outfits and they need a different organizational system. In this case, the organization could be by color group by function.

Method #2: Organize by Color & Function

*Work Outfits
-First by color (all blacks together, all navy’s together, etc.)
-Then all dresses together within the color group
-Then all suits, then all jackets (long to short), all skirts (long to short), all pants (long to short, if any), all tops (long-sleeved to short, plain to print) together in their groups within the color

*Casual Outfits
-First by color
-Then all dresses, all jackets (long to short), all skirts (long to short), all pants (long to short), all tops (long-sleeved to short, plain to print) together in their groups within the color

*Dressy Outfits (organized similarly to the above)

Can you see how this organizational system can be useful in putting together outfits? You’ll have all the items in the same color family organized together in the closet, so it will be easy to pull together complete outfits because everything will be hanging together. By further segmenting into the Work/Casual/Dressy if you have room, you’ll be even more specific.

How do you like to organize your closet? I’d love to hear from you in the Comments!

Thanks for reading!

Adena