How to Organize Your Wardrobe

Tired of wasting time looking for the right tie or shirt to go with a certain pair of pants, or weeding through your clothes that are strewn all over the floor or piled high on a chair? Frustrated with being late for everything because you can’t ever find matching shoes?

Relax, take a deep breath and read on for some helpful tips for taming the closet monster and for getting yourself organized in the process.

Start at the Top

If the top of your dressers aren’t visible, get a box or a bag and clear everything off first. Then you’ll need a valet, no not someone to park the car, but a small box, usually wooden, that’s used for storing things like cuff links, your watches, wallet, keys, wedding ring, and some even double as a charging station for your cell phone and similar electronic devices.

Women call them “jewelry boxes” and we call them “valets” as ours are able to be far more useful than just simply holding some jewelry or the kid’s baby teeth.

Dig Into the Middle

Next it’s time to empty out all of your dresser drawers and unload the closet. It makes sense to organize the closet by the type of clothing you have. Work clothes should be in one section along with ties, casual clothing in another and maybe another for jeans, suits, or pieces you don’t wear very often.

If there’s room in the top of the closet to stack items like sweaters, hats, or whatever might not fit inside the dresser drawers, set aside a pile for these things and consider installing a shelf or two in the closet if you don’t already have one. Also, it’s better to keep any type of hat stored on a flat surface rather than on hooks as they’ll pull them out of shape.

The smallest dresser drawers should be reserved for socks and underwear, with the socks grouped together in pairs however you like. If you wear a lot of t-shirts and undershirts you’ll probably need a whole drawer just for them, sorted by type and folded in some sort of neat fashion so they don’t get wrinkled beyond recognition
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Finish at the Bottom

Jeans, shorts, and sweatpants should all be kept in the bottom drawers, although jeans do take up quite a bit of valuable drawer space and can be hung up in the closet if need be.

Most men don’t have a large collection of shoes, but nevertheless, a few pairs for work, some casual shoes, and another pair or two of athletic shoes do add up. If you have the room in the closet, use a shoe rack, either the kind that hangs on the back of the door or one that sits inside on the floor or on a shelf. If closet space is already at a premium, clear the dust bunnies out from under the bed and keep them there along with flat boxes for storing rarely used items.

Now that you’re all done, the trick is keeping it this way, which can easily be achieved with minimal effort on your part by doing a once-a-week quick clean up.