Being short on room in our closet, we had to determine what items merited space there and which could be stored elsewhere. Off season items are kept in the guest room closet which creates a great opportunity during seasonal rotations to donate items that weren't used, keeping our wardrobes smaller and limited to pieces that are actually worn. The guest room also holds gym clothes, ski gear, my dresses, Bryce's suits, painting/project clothes, sports clothing, off season jackets/coats and random halloween type dress up items. There is a dresser in the guest room where I store seasonal clothing and my swim suits. Frequently worn shoes and coats are kept by the back door along with scarves, gloves and other accessories. Less frequently worn but still in-season coats and shoes are stored in the coat closet under the stairs and out of season or dressy shoes are stored in a bin in the garage attic. So...back to the bedroom closet.
After all the above mentioned items are taken out of the mix and put away, we're left with this (at this point spread across the guest room while the closet was torn apart).
and they all needed to go in here
My first step is always to catalogue what items I have, sorting them into groups and taking note of the largest or bulkiest and starting with those. In this case, I started with our denim. Bryce and I dress very casually for work, in jeans every day, so we own a lot of jeans.
With Bryce being taller than me, all of this clothes would naturally go on the upper shelves and mine on the lower. I put Bryce's jeans vertically on two shelves; they're sorted lightest in color on top to darkest on bottom, since he typically chooses depending on the color of his shirt. My jeans are on the horizontal shelf. I typically choose my pair depending on the height of heel I want to wear that day so they're sorted in piles of long, medium and short/skinnies. Each pile is then sorted from lightest on top to darkest on bottom.
I hang any sweaters that won't get the hanger bubbles on the shoulders and all the rest are folded and organized by color in rainbow order (I'm a big fan of rainbow order).
The shelving sytem we bought has a tall vertical space to one side for dresses but we use the space for a canvas sweater hanger that houses sweaters in the winter and shorts and skirts in the summer. Again, I sorted by rainbow order and put Bryce's on the top half and mine on the bottom.
Most of the shirts we own are hung, the exceptions being screen printed type t-shirts and Bryce's under shirts.
Bryce's shirts all went on the top and mine on the bottom; all are sorted in rainbow order and within each color, by sleeve length.
Then we get into smaller groups of items that can take up the remaining space. Our few pairs of dress pants on pant hangers, sweat pants, my few skirts, my camis and my unmentionables in the drawers at the bottom.
All that was left was some accessory items: scarves looped over hangers, belts on hooks, my clutches in a clear bin below the sweaters, empty hangers and what you can't see in the photo, my off season bags on the top shelf above Bryce's shirts.
The dresser you can see to the side of some of these photos houses Bryce's under items, sports type shorts, swim trunks, our socks and screen print type t-shirts. We have a lot of t-shirts, mostly held onto for only sentimental reasons. I roll them instead of folding them to optimize space and so that they can all be seen at once.
