It’s officially been 1 year since I moved into my first apartment. One year later and I still wake up every morning grateful to have a place to call my own. Life is good! But if I’m being honest, my home organization is not. Pandemic shopping and life in general have made it necessary for me to give my space a total home organization makeover. So that’s what I plan to do! This post is the first in a series of me organizing every room in my home. First up: my bedroom closet!
Binge watching THE HOME EDIT on Netflix was definitely one of the highlights of my pandemic TV binge. Y’all don’t know how excited my little Virgo heart got watching them transform people’s homes into organizational masterpieces. One of my favorite episodes is when they transform Reese Witherspoon’s closet. The Legally Blonde memorabilia, the award show dresses. I mean come on! I wanted her closet after that episode. Then I realized I could have it. What the Home Edit team does isn’t revolutionary, it’s just intentional. I can have a closet as organized as Reese Witherspoon’s and you can too! Here’s how to organize your closet like the Home Edit.
THE EDIT: PURGE
If you are reorganizing your closet, more than likely you have had a “walls closing in on me” moment within the last few months. I know I did. I walked into my closet one day and just stood in it. There was so much stuff! A lot of it I didn’t even wear. So it had to go. This is the first step of organizing your closet like the Home Edit.
Go through every single piece of clothing. Every shoe, every piece of jewelry. What can you get rid of? What have you not worn in the last year? 6 months? Be honest with yourself. It’s ok to keep a few pieces for sentimental reasons but that dress in the back of the closet that’s 4 sizes too small? Do you really think you will wear that again? Probably not.
Make a pile to donate to charity and a pile for newer items that you can resale online. A lot of the clothes in my closet still had tags on them so I decided to resale them on Poshmark. Why not make a bit of the money I spent back? You can do the same.
THE EXCAVATION: DECLUTTER
Now that you know exactly what will stay and what will go, it’s time to get down to business. It’s time to remove everything from your closet. Yes, EVERYTHING! We are gonna need a blank canvas in order to effectively plan out your new organization system. Find a workstation close to your closet to set as home base. This could be a lounge chair in your bedroom or your bed. Take everything out of your closet and hold it here. Then sanitize your closet. Wipe down the walls, dust the shelves and sweep if you have hardwood floors. Like I said, you want a blank canvas.
THE ENDEAVOR: PLAN
So you have an empty closet. Now what? Well now it’s time for you to decide how to organize your closet. This will probably be the hardest step. What do you want from your new closet? To maximize your storage space? To have easier access to certain things? Write that down. Also think about what hanging method would be best for you. Do you want to organize by color? By clothing type? By season? The options are endless but remember to be intentional. Choose an organization system that will make your life easier and that you can maintain. I chose to organize my clothes by type and then by color.
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THE ENTRY: ORGANIZE
Since you already have a plan, this last step is gonna be a breeze. Using the organization system you wrote down, put your clothes back into the closet, section by section. Hang clothes on coordinating hangers like these or these to keep everything uniform. Place clothes like T-shirts, pjs and workout clothes in storage baskets and line them on a shelf you can reach easily. I placed mine in these baskets from Target. They fit the cubbies of my closet perfectly.
Since items like sweaters and other knits can lose their shape over time if hung on hangers, a good way to store them is to fold and stack them on top of each other. You can do this with jeans too if you have too many pairs to hang. Shoes can be lined up on shelves or stacked in shoe boxes like these or a shoe rack like this one. I personally chose to tuck my purses into a storage basket but if you have nice designer bags you want to keep on display, do it!
Now that you are done, sit back and take in your hard work. You’ve organized like the Home Edit! Like most things, organization systems are always changing. Come back in a few months and see whether this system is still working for you. You may realize you need to move the storage boxes to a lower shelf or that certain shoes can be tucked farther away. This time you won’t have to take everything out of the closet. Just make the small adjustments and you’ll be good to go!
Having an organized closet has made my life so much easier. I take a ton of outfit pictures for Instagram and blog content so I want to know exactly where a piece of clothing is when I need it. With my new closet, I know where everything is.
You can check out my closet organization process in my latest Youtube video below. I’m honestly so excited about how everything turned out. Already trying to decide what organization project to tackle next. I’m thinking about the bathroom!
As always feel free to leave me a comment if you have any questions!
‘Til next time,
Xo Mia
