Day 3: Organizing My Closet

by Ali | Apr 15, 2015 | Amazon, Clothing, Shoes, & Accessories, Organizing & Cleaning

I am still unpacking from our Passover Vacation away. For the most part we got almost everything unpacked and in the laundry room rather quickly. But I left my suitcase until the end to try to keep the clutter to the mess. While we were traveling we did a side trip to the outlets in Maryland and I was able to find a bunch of really great deals at the outlets for pieces to just expand my options with outfits. I work at a more corporate building and when I started working I was pregnant, so this is the first time I am not pregnant or breast feeding, so my wardrobe was definitely in a need of a little updating.

Most of the time I keep my closet separated into sections. My dresses and long skirts in one area, my suits in another, my skirts in another, my summer weight shirts in another, my sweaters in another, and then all my jackets and cardigans. Over the last month as I was hoping for warmer weather, I started keeping everything I had worn in one section of my closet. I was hoping to try not to wear anything from that side of the closet until I had tried to use more of my wardrobe. The other reason was so I could figure out what was just sitting in my closet and no longer being worn.

Tonight as I was unpacking I decided it was a perfect time to go through the closet. I went through all of the items I hadn’t worn and asked myself three questions:
1. Why didn’t I wear it? (was it too cold, too warm, or not appropriate for work)
2. Would I wear this item in a different situation? (Like a formal affair, etc.)
3. Do I have something to match it?

I made pies of clothing to go away into my drawers that are no longer filled with Maternity/Nursing clothing. And then piles to try to sell or donate.

There are a ton of places to sell clothing to, but the issue with most of them is that they only want items from the last year or so to try to sell. I can understand they want to stay with the trends and styles.

We have a lot of great resources in our Jewish community to donate clothing. This is usually my first choice if I have the time. We even have a Jewish Freebay group on Facebook that I can post everything I have and give it to other people in the community.

There are also so many resources of places that will come and pick up. In other communities we have lived in that were not so fortunate to have a Jewish Freebay, we have donated to Habitat for Humanity’s ReStore, Big Brothers & Big Sisters, NCJW, etc.

I wear a lot of different scarfs in my hair, so I found this great hanger and they take up a lot less room.

I wear a tank top under a lot of my clothing, so I found these great to hold tank tops and camisoles. It works much better than trying to get them to stay on regular hangers or being lost in a drawer.

For my husband, we bought these in the fall and they have been great.

We inherited them from our first house because the previous owner made one of the bedrooms into a walk-closet and so there were lots of storage items and organizational items that were left over. My favorite thing were these crystal clear shoe box size stackable drawers. I think I have seen them at the Container Store before.

Do you need some inspiration for closet organization? 
I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately about pairing down wardrobes, but one of the ones I find most intriguing is Project 333. I’m not sure I can pair down to only 33 items. Could you?