How to Make your Closet More Efficient

Does your closet cause you to lose time in the mornings? Is it hard to find what you need? Have you ever ended up wasting money on new clothes because you simply couldn't keep up with where you put yours? Sounds like you need an efficiency expert. In business, efficiency experts evaluate all aspects of a business, finding ways to cut costs and maximize production. In other words, they find ways to make the company more efficient. Taking the same approach with your closet as an efficiency expert would take with a business could help you to identify problem areas and fix the things that are causing your closet to continually stay in a state of disarray.

1) Look at every aspect of your closet. Get a pen and paper ready and take some notes. This will help you to remember problems that you found even after you become fixated on one thing that needs fixing. Now, when I say "every aspect" of your closet, I really mean every aspect. We're not talking about only straightening up what's there, but also evaluating how clothing goes to and from the closet. When a closet gets really bad off, it's usually because there was a breakdown in the system. The laundry got washed and dried and then was never put away. The basket of half clean, half dirty laundry ended up living in your closet floor. Jot down everything that you don't like, and even things that you do like that tend to not stay neatly organized.

2) Okay, take your list and tackle one thing at a time. If your stack of t-shirts are always falling over, make a note that you might want a basket for them, or possibly some t-shirt hangers. Then move on to the next thing on the list. Do the shoes live in a pile at the bottom of the closet instead of in your over-the-door shoe organizer? Then write down the problem. Make notes as to why you think you don't use the organizer. Do you not like how it swings when it's full? Do you simply feel like it's too far away from your shoes when you take them off? Write down a possible solution, like a shelf that you can kick shoes onto. Make suggestions for yourself and try to make everything as easy as possible to use.

3) Make a place for everything, but make the places easy to use, clean, and maintain. I love using open bins and buckets for smaller items. I don't like drawers because things get lost in them, for one, but they're not very versatile either. If they're shallow enough to not waste space, then they can only hold ties and socks. You can never use it for anything else. I love that I can take a bucket or bin with me when I sit down to fold laundry. I don't want to spend all day in front of the closet when I could be relaxing on the couch mating my socks!

4) Another way to make your closet efficient is to choose the right clothes hangers. Hangers can be difficult to stretch your clothes over, flimsy enough to send your clothes sailing to the floor, or they could constantly get tangled up on the bar. Hangers are not one-size-fits-all. They are all designed with a specific purpose in mind. Cedar hangers and wood hangers are definitely for coats, but you can use cascading space saving hangers for the rest.