If you’re anything like us, then you’ll have gotten your spring clean started by now (and if you haven’t, be sure to take a look at our spring cleaning tips and tricks to get you started.)  Today, we’re focussing on one specific component of your house which will benefit from a little tidy-up.

If you’ve amassed a sufficiently large collection of clothes, then it can become difficult to keep them all in order. What’s more, the wardrobe will often serve as a crude dumping ground for all of the items in your possession that you can’t quite find a home for. The bottom of the average wardrobe, after all, is often so dark that you can sling whatever shoes, jackets, odd socks and paperwork into the bottom without worrying about it for months afterwards. We’re all guilty of treating this beleaguered item of furniture as a dumping ground – which makes the occasional sort-out invaluable.

If you’re going to be performing a more general spring-clean, then it makes sense to include getting your wardrobe in decent shape among your objectives. Let’s run through a few of the tips and tricks that’ll make doing so easy.

Step One: Start By Getting Everything Out

Our first step should be to take stock of the damage. Get everything out of the bottom of your wardrobe and lay it out in the open. If your wardrobe is in your bedroom, then put it on the bed – that way you won’t be tempted to abandon the task, as you’ll need somewhere to sleep later on!

The chances are overwhelming that there will be items in there that you haven’t worn in ages. And among these, the majority will be items that you’ll never wear again. There’s no point in putting this stuff back into the bottom of your wardrobe. Dispose of it – but don’t bin it. Instead, take it to your local charity shop. That way you’ll be contributing to a worthy cause, and preventing those abandoned clothes from going to waste.

Naturally, the dividing line between stuff you’re done with and stuff you love is rarely stark. There will exist a middle ground of dresses, jeans and t-shirts that you once loved, but which don’t really reflect your current style. There may be others that you’re attached to for sentimental reasons.

When making a decision about an item of clothing, be sure to take into account its size. Try it on and see how it looks. If you can’t get into it, or it’s swamping you, then consider getting rid of it. If you’d like to be bigger or smaller in the future, however, you might want to keep it as an incentive, or a reminder of how you used to look.

Step Two: Get Your Storage Right

If your possessions are piled just beneath your hanging clothes at the foot of your wardrobe, then the chances are that you haven’t put sufficient thought into storage. Now that you’ve gotten everything out and you can see the big empty space at the bottom of your wardrobe, you’ll want to start thinking about how you can make use of it.

Sort your clothes into categories based on how you’d like to store them. Lighter items which you wear often should be hung. For some especially light items, a hook might provide a place to hang them without stretching. Heavier jumpers and t-shirts, on the other hand, should be folded up and placed in boxes or drawers.

While you’re taking stock of your clothes, you’ll also want to take stock of the hangers you’re using. If any of them are looking worse-for-wear, toss them. Treat yourself by bulk-buying a pack of substantial replacements, giving yourself room for later expansion.

If you’re like most women (and some men), then you’ll have removed a sizeable horde of shoes from the bottom of your wardrobe earlier in this process. The best approach for storing these comes with tiered shelves. Hang your shortest clothes just above the shoe rack – that way you won’t need to worry about the bottom of a long coat scattering your prized footwear.

Step Three: Storing and Organising Your Clothes

Once you’ve gotten your storage solutions into place at the bottom of the wardrobe, there’s little point in simply placing everything haphazardly wherever you feel like placing it. Now is the best possible time to introduce some logic and meaning into a chaotic wardrobe.

Obviously, you’ll want to sort the different types of clothing into different sections. That way you’ll be able to easily reach for a t-shirt or dress whenever you want one, rather than having to root through your entire collection. Where possible, try to arrange your clothes either into length or colour order, or both. Remember, your objective here is that you should spend as little time as possible retrieving clothes from your wardrobe in the future – the less time you’re taking clothes in and putting them back, the less chaos you’ll be creating in there, and the easier it’ll be to get other clothes out in the future.

Where clothes are out of season, consider wrapping them in vacuum bags. That way they’ll be protected while they aren’t being used. You’ll be able to gradually migrate these protective bags across your wardrobe as the seasons change.

 Final Thoughts

When it comes to keeping your wardrobe well-organised, prevention is invariably far better than cure. Once you’ve gotten everything sorted, therefore, it’s worth taking stock of your wardrobe and its contents more regularly. That way you’ll be able to avoid spending hours correcting the problem again in the future – and you’ll be able to enjoy all of the benefits of a well-organised wardrobe in the intervening period!