As we continue to talk about glow ups through the month of January, I decided the next project we’ll tackle is closet organization—phase two, if you will. If you want to see part one in the glow up series, click here to read about clean skincare. There’s really no order to any of these posts but I did write a pretty good introduction in the first one explaining why self improvement is so important.

Organization is one of the things you hear most mentioned among new year’s resolutions and with good reason! If you’re disorganized, your life is disorganized. I think that we often forget just how important having our affairs sorted is to our well being—both physical and mental. Staying organized keeps us motivated and on the right track to be successful in other endeavors.

I may admittedly not be the best at keeping things organized indefinitely but luckily for us, I am super great at the actual organization which is what I’ll be exploring below. I’ll go through a few different ways you can consider organizing your closet depending on what works best for you and at the end, I’ll have a printable gift to help you out for anyone who decides to use the color method!

The great purge

Before you actually decide to organize your closet, it’s crucial to decide what clothes you want to keep and which ones no longer serve you. I do recommend going through them beforehand to save you the trouble of sorting, organizing, and putting away clothes you don’t even intend to keep. I mean, you can do it that way but I feel doing it first does indeed save time. It also goes faster if you have help like I usually do! You can see Lili pictured above sorting shoes.

When you’ve gone through your clothes and decided which ones you want to give away, the next step is to assess their condition to see if they can and should be donated to a second hand clothing store, resold online for some profit, or are in such poor shape that they should just be thrown away or scrapped. Obviously clothes that have only been worn a few times are worth reselling if you want to make some coin but I wouldn’t sell anything that I’ve worn regularly and would instead donate it though to be fair, I have not resold any of my clothing—it’s all been donated. That would just be the rule I used if I decided to sell my clothing. If it has enough holes to attract mice, throw it out and kick it to the curb.

I do want to emphasis the importance of clothing donation whether you donate to Goodwill, Salvation Army, or other local charities in your area. I always donate clothing and I alternate the organizations that I donate to. Not only do I know that my clothes are getting a second chance but in many cases, they’re also providing a second chance for someone else! If you can donate, please do it. It’s so helpful to your community and it truly does the heart good!

Once you’ve decided which clothes and items that you’re definitely keeping to wear another day, you can choose a sorting method to whip your closet into shape depending on which one fits your lifestyle the best. Below, I will be discussing the 4 main sorting methods that I use when helping clients with their closet because I find that they’re most useful and easy to remember.

Sorting by color

The first method of closet organization that I’m going to discuss is sorting by color which is my favorite and the only method I’ve found to work for me. It’s exactly as it sounds. You take all of your clothing, shoes, handbags, etc, and you section off your closet by color. This is the only way I can style and I find that having my clothes sorted by color helps me get ready quicker because all the other garments that would go with the garment I’ve chosen are in one place—I don’t need to look far. If I’m trying to match a green shirt, I just go to the green and pull out a jacket.

Sorting by color allows me to see which hues I already have the most of and which ones I need to invest more in. If I have a lot of red but hardly any orange, I will bypass that red dress and get something orange to keep my closet balanced. Colors are also important in styling and having them presorted can help you wear outfits suited to you. If you’ve ever heard “I’m a warm autumn” or “She’s a true spring” then you’ve heard of seasonal color theory in fashion which matches a person’s coloring to the colors that supposedly look best on them. We all want our clothes to compliment us and since I know my “season” and “colors”, it makes finding the shades that flatter me most in the closet an absolute breeze.

We’ll be discussing sorting by season later but it’s worth mentioning that sorting your closet by color also inadvertently helps you sort your clothing by season as well. Most seasons have their own color palette and if your things are all sorted into color, it makes it really easy to find that candy apple read sweater you want to wear for Christmas by going to your red section. Looking for spring pastels? That’s fine, go to yellow! ln my mind, this is the only way to organize your closet but I know that everyone is different and what works for me might not work for you.

What I did to sort my clothes by color was I took my closet and I divided it up into sections using colors in their proper order. For example from left to right: red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink. Within those sections, I also sort by color. The yellow-greens are closest to yellow where it’s just switching to green and the teal is closer to blue where the green is just switching to blue. If this sounds confusing, that’s okay! I’m leaving you with the printable color chart that I use for my closet to help you! I’ll explain later.

Sorting by season

Sorting by season is the method used by my mother and she swears by it. Her theory is to only keep the clothes you’re actively wearing for that season in your closet and keep the rest of them stored until you’re ready to switch them out. Whether you decided to do this for only one season or broke it down into fall/winter and spring/summer, this is good advice for smaller closet space and I understand why she feels it’s so effective even over my color method.

Personally, it makes me feel like a vagabond constantly moving my hobo clothes around because they have no true home but for people big into storage, I get it! Honestly, this would be great for a minimalist or a minimalist style house. Older houses with less closet space could benefit from this idea as well because you can always store the clothes you aren’t wearing under things like beds, sofas, etc.

You can achieve this organization method by first sorting all of your clothes into seasons. This would mean your coats would be winter, your sweaters would be autumn, your blouses would be spring, your sundresses would be summer, etc—you get it! There’s really no right way or wrong way to do this, it’s personal to you. If you’re someone whose always cold, leave a couple sweaters in your closet regardless of if you’re on summer or not! Whatever you’re wearing most during those seasons, put it out during that season and whatever you’re not, save it for later and worry about it when their season rolls around.

Sorting by occasion

Another way to sort your clothing is by occasion! What does this mean? It means that rather than sorting by season or color, you sort your clothes based on where you’re wearing them. You see this type or organization a lot in stores where there will be different “departments” depending on what type of event you’re attending. An example of this would be prom or bridal sections that aren’t included with everyday women’s clothing. Men’s suits and tuxedos typically don’t hang on the rack with Levi jeans and flannel.

Sorting by occasion thrives on the idea that you should have your closet separated for the different areas of your life. You would divide your closet up similarly to if you were going to sort by color but instead of using color, you would place clothes you wear to work on the right and clothes you wear to formal events or parties on the left and in the middle might be your everyday casual attire—a fourth section could be added for athletic wear or workout gear.

Like sorting by color, this would make grabbing an outfit very quick because you’d just reach into a section dependent on where you were headed. If you’re getting ready for work, you know you’re only pulling from the right side of the closet and all of your occupational outfits are just a hanger away. If you’re running late and in a rush to make it to a party, you’d go to the left side and grab the first thing your hand touched! You’re not going to create a fashion faux pas because you’ve already sorted these clothes when you did have the time to think about it and deemed them acceptable to wear that type of event. The hard work is already done, you just need to grab something and head to the party! Anything from the left is party pre-approved and the same would be said of your other occasion sections as well.

I feel like this method is good for those who don’t quite trust themselves styling on the fly yet but don’t always have the time to plan out a full outfit the night before. You could even hang entire outfits in your different occasion sections to save yourself the hassle if you’re not the type of person who is more of a practical person. Again, having your party outfits, gym outfits, and work outfits all ready to grab and go is a smart way to organize!

Sorting by brand

Now, back when I was just starting to collect designer things and I didn’t have that many, I had my closet organized by brand before I switched to the color method. Sorting by brand is another trick used in department stores that you may be familiar with already and it’s snatchable for your closet as well should you choose this method.

Sorting by brand was good for me when I first started collecting designer things because I could keep an eye on how my wardrobe was growing. I started from a single vintage Versace sweater to about five hangers of Versace which let me know it was time to focus on a different brand to broaden my horizons.

You don’t have to be a collector to use this method, you only need to be someone whose brands matter to them! If you’re someone who only likes to wear Michael Kors, have a Michael Kors section of your closet to set it apart from your Kate Spade, and Karl Lagerfeld! I see this a lot with sneaker collectors who will store their sneakers by brand and nothing else.

Sorting by brand makes it easy to find your favorites and if you have a particular clothing label you think is the most comfortable, give it it’s own place of honor in your closet! Have a jean company you swear by? Give it a section! Is there only one type of coat you buy? Sounds like it needs a section!

Printable color labels

I have the same same color labels that I use in my closet available to print for anyone who decides to go with the color method. Each color has three boxes broken down into separate shades. If you don’t want to get that into the weeds, you can just pick the basic colors and leave the in between shades alone however if you’re unsure of how to sort your clothes and which color they would be considered, I suggest using the shades as a guide. Shades are also helpful when color sorting prints.

Print out these colors and cut them into small rectangles. You can then tape them to the shelf or wall of your closet above where the clothing of that color will hang to create a section. I included pictures of how I did my closet above for reference so long as you ignore the fact that I’m still in the middle of remodeling my living space.

These labels can also be laminated and I plan to laminate mine so they don’t wrinkle or fall off my shelves but as a temporary placeholder to help me figure out my colors, the paper works just fine!

You can find these labels here. Save and print them like any other picture and then cut to size. Tape or pin them in your closet to create color sections and place clothing matching the color beneath.

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