Organizing Your Clothes

August 9, 2024

Getting your clothes organized (and then keeping them that way) can be really hard for people (especially with ADHD). Whether it be your busy lifestyle, lack of a good system, or your habits that keep you from having organized clothes, if you struggle with your clothes being disorganized, you are not alone! I’ve helped people get their clothes organized from varying states. Sometimes the clothes are in big piles and need a complete overhaul. Other times, just a few tweaks are needed. No matter where you are on your wardrobe organizing journey, you can learn how to do it! In this post, I’ll talk about the basics of organizing your wardrobe.

Sort Your Clothes

While it might feel right to rush in and start buying new furniture or gadgets, before you do that, it’s going to be important to sort your clothes. This is an especially important step if you have all types of clothes mixed together. Ideally, you’re going to want to have all your clothes clean before you do this. That way, you’ll be able to see that quantity of choices you have with each category. Depending on how much space and time you have, you may not be able to do this all in one day. Separate your clothes by category (shirts, pants, socks, etc). You may want to keep your categories broad (such as “shirts”) and refine later, or you may feel ready to sub-categorize into smaller categories such as “tank tops”, “t-shirts”, “work shirts”, “long sleeved shirts”, etc. You may want to use boxes or bags that you label with each of the different categories rather than just making piles.

Donate/Sell

You can either do this step once you’ve sorted all your clothes, or once you’ve sorted each individual category. Now that you can see all that you have together, it makes it easier to make decisions about what to keep and what to get rid of. Pull everything you want to either donate or sell, and bag it up. Donating is much easier and quicker than selling. If you do decide to sell your clothes, be warned that it may take a significant amount of time and energy to do so, and may not be worth your efforts unless you have high value items. When you’re going through your clothes to decide what to keep and what not to keep, you may come across clothes that need mending, that don’t fit, that are sentimental (but you’ll never wear), specialty clothing, and clothes that are worn out. Here’s what to do:

Clothing that needs mending: Ask yourself, “is it really worth it?” I’m all for mending clothes rather than pitching them, but not if the amount of time and energy outweighs how much you love the item. If it’s worth it, decide if (and when!) you’re going to do it yourself or if you’re going to take it to a seamstress. If it’s not worth it, you can donate it (as long as it’s clean), as many clothing donation places will be able to recycle the fabric. Or you can post it online (or ask your friends) to see if someone else wants it. All that takes time, so as often as you’re willing, choose the easier option. Many times homes are filled with clutter because they want to make sure their stuff “goes to the right place”. This can be a debilitating desire.

Clothes that don’t fit: Unless you have a medical condition in which you frequently change sizes, I highly recommend getting rid of any clothing that doesn’t fit. If you absolutely must keep it, store similarly sized clothing together in a way where they won’t get mixed up with your current size (such as in labeled bins or bags). Label these well with what size they are. There is a strange phenomenon with people who are holding a bunch of their smaller sizes in hopes that they can fit in them again. It seems like once they finally donate the smaller sizes, they end up losing the weight they hadn’t been able to lose.

Sentimental clothing: T-shirts that are very meaningful to you, clothing from a grandparent, or a well-loved (but very holey) sweater would all fall into this category. Ask yourself if you’re holding on to these items because you genuinely still love them, or if you’re holding onto them out of guilt or obligation. If you’re not sure, close your eyes as you hold the piece of clothing. See if you can feel whether your body is sending you signals about whether or not to keep the item. Use this opportunity to free yourself from the “old you”, and let yourself step into the new and improved version of yourself. Of course, by all means, keep the stuff that’s really special (if you must!). But remember, the more you can let go of, the more space you’ll be making for good things to come your way.

Specialty clothing: This is clothing that you only wear on a particular occasion. Depending on the type of clothing and frequency of use, you may want to store this away from your everyday wear. But before you do, decide if you’re really ever going to wear it again or not. Don’t just keep something because it was expensive.

Clothes that are worn out: This is probably the hardest category for me, as the more worn something is, the more I tend to love it! Take a photo of yourself wearing the clothes, and see what you think. Sure, they may be super comfortable, but do they make you feel and look your best? Don’t be frivolous, but choose to upgrade whenever possible. When you decide to pass on items that you’ll eventually need to replace, keep a running list of the clothes that you’ll want to re-buy (either now or for the future).

Go ahead and remove the clothing that you don’t want as quickly as possible. Don’t drive around for months with a bag for Goodwill in your trunk. If you find yourself procrastinating on posting clothes to sell online or putting off taking them to the consignment store, just let them go. It’s not worth having them take up valuable real estate on your to-do list.

Decide where everything is going to go

Now is the time to figure out if you’re going to store your clothes in drawers, on hangers, in bins, or a combination of storage options. Personally, I like to hang as many tops as possible (except for my sweaters and workout tops). I use drawers for almost everything else. Since you’ve already separated everything by category, it makes it easy to visualize how much space each category will take up. You may need to buy a stand-alone dresser, or smaller sets of drawers to fit inside your closet. Or you might want to get a hanging cubby solution. Do you need to add a shelf (or shelves)? You might need more hangers to get everything put away. Contrary to what some professional organizers say, not all your hangers have to match!

Refine and label

Once you have your clothes put away, use temporary labels like post-it notes to help train your brain to know where everything belongs. You can always use a label maker to make nicer looking labels in the future, if needed. You may also want to use drawer dividers or containers within drawers to help separate different categories of clothes within each drawer. If you’re storing clothes on shelves, you can get dividers to help keep stacks separate.

Maintain your standards

Take some photos of how you’ve organized everything. This will help inspire you to keep it organized. It will also help you pop it back into place if things get chaotic. But instead of fearing that you’ll fall into the trap of disorganization again, rest assured that now that you’ve created homes for everything, you’ll have a much easier time keeping things organized.

Additional tips

Rotate seasonal clothes in and out of your accessible real estate. This might mean packing off-season clothes away, swapping closets, or just rotating how accessible things are within a single closet or dresser.
When you’re organizing how you’re storing your clothes, I recommend putting like-items together. For example, if you’re going to be hanging sleeveless shirts, short-sleeved shirts, long-sleeved shirts, and sweatshirts, instead of having these categories all mixed up, put all the sleeveless together, short-sleeved together, etc. Conversely, you may also want to group outfits together. This can be a great way to help you rotate through a larger variety of clothes rather than just wearing the same handful of items each week.
Hang all your hangers the same way. To help you figure out what you haven’t worn in a while, try hanging all your hangers backwards. Once you wear it, put it back on the hanger so that the hanger isn’t backwards anymore. At the end of a few months, see which items are still on backwards hangers. Ask yourself why.
Sometimes clothes that you love don’t get worn because you don’t have the proper undershirt or pants or top… or whatever. Make a list of what’s missing from your wardrobe so that the next time you’re shopping for new clothes, you can complete your look. Or if you’re not sure what you need to complete the look, bring your lonely article of clothing to a local clothing store so they can help you find what you need.
Do you have a whole bunch of clothes that you never wear because they require special laundering or dry cleaning? Get honest with yourself with how much time you want to devote to caring for your clothes. Let go of anything too high maintenance. When shopping for new clothes, opt for easier care items instead.
If you’re too busy to properly fold your clothes, just get them where they belong. This will help you not feel like you have endless piles of laundry. You may never want to fold your clothes, and that’s ok too!
Once you feel like you have achieved a balance with the amount of clothes you have versus the storage space you have available, it will be important to maintain that balance. You may want to abide by the “one in, one out” rule. Or at least ask yourself where you’re going to put the new item(s) of clothing that you’re contemplating purchasing.