How do I organise a wardrobe?

Wardrobe problems are volume problems. Every organising system fails in an overfull wardrobe, because the mechanism that keeps it tidy is being able to see and reach everything without disturbing anything else.

What you'll need

• Bags or boxes for sorting
• Matching hangers (optional)
• Shelf dividers or boxes (optional)

Step by step

1. Take absolutely everything out.Onto the bed, so you have to deal with it before you sleep. Sorting inside the wardrobe never works.
2. Sort into keep, undecided, and go.Honest criteria: worn in the last year, fits now, and you would buy it again today. Sentimental items are a separate small category.
3. Put the undecided box away for six months.If you have not looked for anything in it by then, you have your answer without having to make the decision now.
4. Deal with the going pile immediately.Charity shop, resale, textile recycling. Bags left in the hall for a month migrate back in.
5. Remove out-of-season clothes to storage.It roughly halves the volume, which is what makes everything else work. Store them clean and somewhere dry.
6. Group by type, then by colour.All shirts together, all trousers together. Colour within type makes finding a specific item almost instant.
7. Use matching slim hangers.It sounds cosmetic and it genuinely creates space, keeps things hanging evenly, and stops shoulders being distorted.
8. Use the vertical space.Shelf dividers, hanging organisers, boxes on the top shelf. Most wardrobes have a large amount of unused height.

Tips

• Fold knitwear rather than hanging it. Hanging stretches the shoulders permanently.
• Hang the things you wear most at eye level in the easiest position. Sounds obvious; almost nobody does it deliberately.
• Keep one empty shelf or a few empty centimetres of rail. A wardrobe at exactly capacity becomes disorganised the first time you buy anything.

Common mistakes

• Buying storage before reducing — More storage in an overfull wardrobe fills up immediately. Reduce first, then buy only what you actually need.
• Keeping clothes for a body or life you do not currently have — They occupy space and prompt a small negative feeling every time you look. Store them elsewhere or let them go.
• Filling it to capacity — The system depends on being able to see and remove things easily. A packed rail cannot stay organised.

Questions people ask