Another thought: Please could you do some articles (rather than videos) about where to store your clothes. ( thinking about what type of clothing is best hung in a wardrobe OR folding on a shelf in the wardrobe OR in chest of drawers alongside the wardrobe). shirts, knits, cardigans, trousers and jeans etc. So storage verses accessibility and being able to see all clothing options as much as possible, if you get my drift. … thanks
Wardrobe storage is a little personal. It can depend on what your wardrobe looks like and the space you have.
Personally I prefer to hang as much as possible. Most of us go to our hanging section first, so if you can see it hanging, then you’re more likely to wear it.
Hanging Tips
1. Only 1 garment per hanger
2. Hang similar items together – eg. skirts together, trousers together, jackets together etc. This allows you to discover more mix and match possibilities as you start to see what your options are.
3. Hang in color order. I go through the rainbow, starting at white, then through the rainbow ending with brown, gray and black. This way you can easily find your pink top when you’re in a hurry. Plus you discover if you’re rather color dominant in any way – I will always remember doing a wardrobe audit with one of my clients and she insisted she had no green tops, but we found about 20 of them, but because they weren’t hung together she didn’t realize just how many she had (and kept buying more because she thought she was lacking in green tops.
4. Throw out wire hangers. They trash your clothing. They rust, leave marks in your clothes and should be returned to the dry cleaner rather than used at home. Invest in some decent hangers. If you have space, wooden ones are great, if you’re space poor the slim velour hangers are fabulous as things don’t slip off them.
5. Find your wardrobe hot spots and cold spots (where you reach first, and where you reach last). Put your most used garments in your hot spot – for me that’s tops. Then put your least used in your cold spots (for most of us it’s evening wear). Make it easy for yourself to get dressed, don’t have your most used clothes in a hard to reach place. One of my clients wanted to dress more smart casual than relaxed casual, yet she had all her relaxed casual tops in her wardrobe hot spot, so of course that’s what she reached for each day. We swapped it around, put her smart casual tops in her hot spot and moved those more casual tops to a slightly harder to reach spot so that she’d reach for the clothes that made her look smarter first!
6. Make sure you hang skirts on skirt hangers and trousers on trouser hangers. They keep your clothing investment in better condition.
7. You can use hanging pockets to store shoes in the hanging portion of your wardrobe – it makes them easy to find and is an economical use of space.
Drawer Tips
1. Drawers are great for underwear, hosiery, sleepwear, exercise wear, shorts, beach wear, jeans, but not much else. I can’t tell you how many times when cleaning out drawers with clients they’ve discovered tops that they’d completely forgotten they had because they’d got stuck at the back of a drawer.
2. Use old shoe boxes to divide up smaller items such as underwear, socks, hose and bras.
3. Don’t over fill them.
Shelving Tips
1. Shelves can be great for larger pieces of knitwear that would get stretched if hung, and that may be too chunky for a drawer.
2. Tidy shelves frequently, like drawers they can get out of control easily.
3. Don’t just store a heap of old stuff on your shelves because you have space. Shelves are often the space I see old, out of date clothes go to die, yet they never get laid to rest (given away), they just stay there for years, but are never worn.
4. Shelves can also be great for jeans, shorts and exercise wear. Very few people have enough discipline to keep all their knits tidy on shelves, though one of my clients has the most organised shelves I’ve ever seen and she folds all her knits in tissue paper to stop creasing and slipping in their piles, and they are arranged in color.
5. Shelves can also work for shoes, if you have lots of them. You can stack shoe boxes on them if you like to keep shoes in boxes. Otherwise, you can store shoes one behind each other on the shelf so you can easily find them.
6. Handbags are great stored on shelves. Stand them next to each other so you can easily slide out (like the
