Summer might be the easiest season in which to organize a closet. Summer clothes, shoes, and accessories are lighter and often take up less room. And warm weather wardrobes are usually brighter and more varied, so they’re more fun to look at than a closet full of grey pants. Here are a few summer-specific tips for straightening out your closet.
1. Store your winter clothes
When it’s hot and humid, you’ll feel even sweatier when trying to decide what to put on in the morning if you’re looking at a bunch of corduroy skirts or velvet blazers.
Move cold-weather clothes elsewhere to give yourself and your summer clothes room to breathe.
2. Get rid of never worn items
Summer is the easiest season to get away with trendy, “disposable” clothes. But these clothing items almost always have an expiration date. If you’re holding on to any summer impulse purchases from more than a few years ago, consider getting rid of them now. Also look over those off-season clothes before they go into storage. Maybe you’ll realize some of them are ready to be donated to charity, freeing up a bit of storage space for you.
3. Dry clean your coats
If needed, dry clean winter and spring coats (or other clothes) that you aren’t going to see for months. That way they’ll be wrinkle-free and ready to wear when you need them on that first cold day.
4. Fix what’s broken
When you’re first organizing your closet for summer, it’s a good time to have broken or scuffed shoes repaired.
This way your fall and winter shoes will be ready when you need them later, and you won’t end up surprised when some event in July requires that one pair of summer sandals you’ve been meaning to fix since last year.
5. Take care of delicate clothes
Summer often means more long dresses, crisp white shirts, sheer or wrinkly fabrics, and fragile embellishments and accessories.
When putting these away in your closet, not only at the start of summer but each time, make sure that your hangers won’t snag on silk or create weird bumps in shoulder seams. Check that the hems of your dresses and long skirts aren’t drooping onto your closet floor.
6. Summer clothes take up less space…
If your summer wardrobe involves a rotation of pieces like tank tops, t-shirts, and shorts, you might want to look at different closet organizers than you’d use for larger, bulkier, cold-weather clothes. Do you need shelf dividers or bins? Or, if you have a large enough dresser, maybe you’ll find you need your closet less in the summer in general.
7. …but summer accessories can take up more space
Summer might lend itself to the smaller clothes mentioned above, but it also comes with some oversized accessories that you need to store. Think giant beach bags and straw hats. If you have a small closet, these might not fit into it without causing you lots of hassle. Large bags, however, can be used to hold smaller bags, so that a set of bags can fit in your closet like Russian dolls. And if you don’t have the shelf space for a wide-brimmed hat, hang it from a peg on the back of a door or toss it over a bedpost, and consider it a casual summery decoration.
8. Don’t forget your shoes
Summer shoes are usually smaller and lighter than the other shoes in your wardrobe, which gives you more options for how to organize them. They’ll fit into almost any hanging or standing closet organizer on the market, and if you don’t have room in your closet, many summer shoes are cute enough to simply leave out, lined neatly along a bedroom wall. And for footwear like inexpensive rubber flip-flops or jelly sandals that often get wet or covered with sand, look for storage that separates them from more delicate shoes. Throw them in a cute pail or leave them by the front door.
Original Article can be found at The Spruce
Elaine Fernando is a Central NJ professional organizer, a member of the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO) and a member of APPO (Association of Personal Photo Organizers). Elaine may be reached at 908-630-8995 or [email protected]
