We only have one closet in our master bedroom, which means that I have to share a closet with the hubby (insert scary face here).  The hubby is not the biggest fan on putting his clothes back where they belong.  He’s more of the “I’ll shove my clothes into one drawer/shelf and look for it later when I actually need it” type of organizer.  Well that wasn’t working for me because I would cringe when I would open the closet to put away my clothes!

Things were really out of control.  So I decided to clean up the closet.  First, I took everything that was hanging out of the closet so the rungs were empty.  Then I started with the hubby’s clothes.  The clothes either went into a designated pile on the floor or on the bed to be hung up in the closet.  I made two piles on the floor using giant garbage bags that I labeled ahead of time.  One pile was for donating and the other was for selling.  If he hasn’t worn it in the past year, I either put it in the donate pile or the sell pile depending on the quality of the clothes.

I like to keep my closet color coordinated.  There are a couple of ways you can do this to make sure it is an effective way to organize your clothes.  For all of my clothes, I keep them fully color-coded, so it looks like a rainbow.  I start with tank tops, then t-shirts then long-sleeved shirts for one color, then go to the next color following this pattern.  I always start with white and go down the line of ROY G BIV (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet) then browns, grays and blacks.  My pants are organized by categories and color-coded.  My jeans are first, going lightest to darkest wash.  My dress pants go from white, green, blue, brown, gray and black.  I have my capri pants first then my slimmer leg cut pants, then my wide-leg pants.  Skirts are after my pants in my closet.  I have them on skirt hangers with like colors.  All of my black skirts are secured to one skirt hanger.  If I have only one color skirt, I will keep it on its own hanger.  All of my dresses are hanging and arranged by color.  I also purchased a scarf organizer and my scarves are arranged by color as well, making it easy to find the scarf I want to wear.

I turn around all the hangers so the round part of the hook was facing in.  Once the shirt/pant was worn, I would turn the hanger around.  When it came time to figuring out what he wears and what he doesn’t, all I had to do was look at the hangers!

Then it came time to organizing my clothes.  Seeing as I have just had two babies in the past three years, I had to come to terms with the fact that my body just isn’t the same as it was pre-baby.  And my wardrobe was looking a little different these days.  I rarely wear jeans, except for date night or girls night out.  So I only kept my nice jeans.  The rest of the jeans I either donated or sold.  Then I had to look at my tops.  I’m not going out clubbing so those teeny tiny tanks needed to go.  Now my wardrobe was starting to look like clothes I actually wear on a daily basis!  That’s what you want to see in a closet.

Once all the clothes that were left on the bed were hung up, I needed to make some changes as to where things were stored/hung.  But my dresses and scarves couldn’t be moved because they would only fit in one place, which was the left side of the closet!  So I put away all the dresses that still fit me and the rest remained on the floor.  Then I put all the hubby’s shirts back up on the top right side of the closet.  Since I am so short, I put my shirts on the bottom right side.  In the middle of the closet, I decided to put our jeans and dress pants.  Having the jeans and pants in the middle of the closet really worked well for us, so I didn’t want to change that.

Now it was time to check the shelves.  They were just not working for me!  So I took to the dresser drawers to see what I could do to hide the hubby’s clothes.  I decided to take my tank tops and t-shirts out of the dresser drawers and move them into the closet.  I put Ben’s t-shirts in that drawer and now I don’t have to look at them any more!  This also helps keep his clothes contained to one area, rather than spewing out all over the closet.

After getting rid of some of the sweaters that we don’t wear any more, I think the closet looks much more organized and easily accessible!  I am keeping the hubby’s sweaters up on the top shelves, while my sweaters are stored in some plastic drawers that I keep under the pants.  This helps keep things organized, and I don’t mind pulling out the drawers to get my sweaters.

Finally, I hung up a bag to serve as our dry cleaning bag.  I find it easy to have a bag near the laundry basket, so when I am cleaning up, I can dump the dirty clothes into the laundry basket, while I can drop the dry cleaning into the dry cleaning bag.  Now that the closet is organized, I have to get the drawers!