This spring cleaning season, make the closet less of a chore with this month’s Home Hack. Use the method below to do a lot of the sorting work for you while you live your normal day-to-day.
Reverse Hanger Trick
You simply take all of your clothes that are currently on hangers, and reverse them from their normal way of hanging. To explain, turn the hangers backwards so that the hanger hook opening faces outwards, towards you. (If you already hang your clothes this way, you’ll just make it the opposite.) When you use an item, place it back on the rack with the hanger hook opening facing the wall, away from you. Then as you go through the next month you’ll see what clothes you actually use, and the ones you never touch. The hanger hook openings still facing out are all your potential donations, yard sale, or give-away/hand-me-down items.
You can use this method for shoes as well. Place all of the shoes on the floor, and as you use a pair place them on a shoe rack or in another part of your room. The ones you never touch are the potential donations, yard sale, or hand-me-down items.
Donations
There are some common misconceptions about clothing donations. Here are a few simple rules to help the donation facility of your choosing while you clean your closet at the same time.
Only donate clean clothing. Many people assume their donations are cleaned at the donation facility before they sell them. This is false. Most donation places do not have the budget or capacity to clean donated items. Only donate CLEAN clothing and goods.- If it’s broken or torn, toss it – don’t donate it. They don’t mend clothing or repair things either.
- Try to Recycle. Have items you just don’t want to give away? There are shops that actually buy lightly used clothes, shoes, jewelry, accessories, and even interesting books for “upcycling.” Check with local consignment shops and vintage stores for selling and upcycling opportunities.
Storage Solutions
Once you’ve sorted through your clothes, it’s SO much easier (and kinda fun?) to organize it. There are a lot of cost-effective closet storage solutions out there these days. Ikea has several full closet systems and storage options that are meant to accommodate any size home. We also found some great organizational solutions on Amazon (pictured below).
Easy View Shoe Storage
Simple Dresser Solutions
Simple, and even the stackable utility drawers work great for things like socks, light clothing, and undergarments.
Drawer Organization
Organizers are great for all the things that tend to get jumbled in drawers.
Compact Hangers and Dust Cover Storage
These options aim to take the bulk out of your closet, which should make finding and retrieving clothes so much easier – and make closets feel more spacious too.
Folding the Clothes
If you’d like to have your folded clothes as neat as a store display, folding boards are the trick!
DeAnna & company 