How To Organize Your Closet

The one thing that we generally find with closets is that they are disorganized. A true Diva will always have a well organized closet so that she can easily find the clothing she needs at a moment's notice.

The easiest way to organize your closet is to start from scratch. You need to completely empty out your closet so that you can see the clothing you need and see the space you have to work with. You need to have your closet set up in a way that makes sense but if you live in an apartment where you cannot make structural changes then we will just work with what you have.

If you have double rods in your closet then you can breathe a sigh of relief because this makes your job so much easier. You can put tops on the higher rod and skirts and pants on the lower rods for easy retrieval. If you only have the one row of rods that is still okay because we can work with it.

Step One: Sorting The first step is to sort out all of your clothes. You need to separate the clothes into piles that make sense. Pick up each item and see if it is usable. Usable means that the clothing is clean and mended. If it meets the criteria, then you can further sort it into one of four piles:

• Tops
• Skirts
• Pants
• Other

If the clothing is dirty then it needs to go into the laundry basket for cleaning at a later time. If the clothing is ripped, frayed or missing buttons then it needs to go into a mending pile where you can take care of that need later as well.

Tops refers to blouses and shirts. These are the everyday items that you wear and do not include jackets. Jackets and coats belong in a totally different closet if you have one, or they can go into the Other category.

Skirts refers to skirts obviously, while Pants can contain jeans, dress pants and khakis. Other refers to all of the outerwear like jackets, coats and scarves that really should not be placed next to the lighter items.

Of course sweaters do not count as part of this group because sweaters should be folded in a drawer, not hung. After you have done all of the sorting you are ready to move onto step Two: Colorizing.

Step Two: Colorizing. The next step is quite possibly the most important part of organizing your closet because it makes the amount of time you have to search for items seem to disappear. (image taken from http://realcolorwheel.com/jpgchartssm.htm)

Most people will tell you that you do not need to divide your items into color groups but EVERY true Diva knows that you MUST sort by color to have the best looking closet you can possibly have.

This step takes a little bit of time but it will be worth it in the end. The best way to sort by color is to go according to the color flow chart.

I start with white in front of the yellow and move on from there. You need to put all shirts together and arrange them by color, following the color wheel.

I put beige and brown between yellow and orange and then place pink (our Fabulous Diva color!!!) between Red Orange and Red.

I round up the end of the closet with grey and then black but I am thinking that you can start with black, fade to grey, go to white and then yellow and continue with the rest of the color wheel. Once you have finished organizing all the tops by color it is really easy to organize the skirts and then the pants.

Chances are you will not have nearly as many different colors of skirts and pants as you do tops. You can breathe easy now because you are almost done with your organizing.

Keep placing the pants and skirts on hangers following the color wheel and soon your closet will look like a work of art.