Organizing Your Home: Developing Systems {Part 2 ~ The Closets}

Welcome to Day {3} of Organizing Your Home!

I hope that you are finding some useful tips and please don't forget I want to hear from you! If you have a system that works for you let us all know about it!

 Today is Part {2} of Developing Systems, yesterday post was about Kitchens and Bathrooms.  Keeping these areas organinzed will help your task to be quick, easy and efficent.

Now on to today's topic!

Developing Systems: In the Closets

Let's look at the Linen Closet first, depending on the size, location and number of linen closets in your house greatly depends on what they are used for. The easiest way to begin is by determining what your linen closet will be home to, once you know begin placing like items in baskets and label your baskets. When dealing with bedding, I only keep two sets of sheets per bed. Crazy I know! I love new sheets so I don't have a ton of them, once they begin to pill I get a new set and donate the old set. My system is that every month I alternate the sheets. I wash the sheets every week so dont freak, I wash the bedding then I put it back on when it is done. The next month when I wash the bedding I put new bedding on and fold what comes out of the dryer. This way I don't wear through them to quickly and also don't have to deal with sheet folding or tons of bedding to store. I keep my sets together and place them in a basket, this way I can grab a whole set and don't have to dig around for the right pillow case or flat sheet. When it comes to towels, the main problem many of us have is there are just to many! Again I only keep on hand what we really need, I have 8 towels for us and 6 for the boys. I do a towel audit a couple times a year, get rid of the ones that are wearing thin, fraying, or torn. After that store them together according to their purpose just like at the stores. Put face and hand towels in a basket next to the bath towels. I have found the good ol triple fold towel is the best way to go, then I stack them with the neat side facing me so that I can grab quickly. I also circulate our towels, meaning I usually do laundry before all our towels are dirty so I put the clean ones at the bottom so that they are all being used and washed.

Now lets take a look at the bedroom closets. I am kinda a freak when it comes to closets, I can't help it, I blame the OCD. You can look in my closet and you will never ever ever find a wire hanger. When dry cleaning comes home it goes immediatly on the plastic hanger! This means less hanger madness and no silly plastic wrap on the floor. I also (and I realize this is a little much for some) keep my cloths in order according to style and then color. All my dress shirts together, tshirts together, dress tank tops together, you get the idea. And the same with my pants. Jeans, skirts, dresses, slacks and so on and such.  I, like most circulate my summer and winter cloths, I don't completely remove and store everything just the summer items that I can't layer or the winter items that are NOT going to be worn. Every time I get them out again I go through my cloths and do a purge. By keeping only the things I love in my closet and having them in order it makes dressing even in a hurry a cinch! And yes I do the same for my hubbies side. I also keep all like shoes together. I have a built in shoe shelf and break it down the same way, style and color. We have a walk in closet and I got tired of having to walk into my bedroom to get my bras and panties and socks then walk into the closet to get dressed, so when I found a 4 drawer plastic bin on the side of the road in perfectly FAB condition I snatched it up, cleaned it up and put it in the closet for my girly needs. Now I go from the bath to the closet and walk out of the closet fully dressed! This is one of the best systems I implemented for myself! I keep my shorts and tank tops in baskets also, I don't feel the need to hang them, but I like them in the closet. As for the kids closets, they are the same as my closet. My yougest is ADD and not medicated so we do what we can to help him stay focused and by keeping his closet organized I have found he is able to get ready faster because the distraction of flipping through his cloths is less.

And now on to the infamous Hall Closet! Sometimes the dreaded hall closet! The main thing in this area is to maximize your space! We only have two hall closets, the down stairs holds all our jackets no matter the season they are all in there. However, there is order to them, the current season of jacket is front and center and each family member has his/her jackets together. Just like I puge my cloths we purge jackets too. If they are not worn during the season away they go to be donated to someone who will wear them. By keeping a limited number of jackets I am able to keep this closet clean and organized with out having to store coats from season to season in another location. We don't store shoes in here because it is no where near where we enter, but if you do a shoe rack is a great system to get to store shoes. If your hall closet is home to scarves, gloves and other misc accessories you should think about investing in over the door shoe pockets. You can use these pockets for all your other accessories that tend to get lost. Assign each member his/her own row. To maxamize the shelf space coral like items in decorative boxes or baskets and use the high shelves for item you don't use often. There are so many closet systems you can get these days, simple and complex, there is something for us all. The main thing to remember when dealing with the closet space is because it is so limited it needs to be kept organized, no matter what you keep in them. If it's games or home decor items, purging IS necessary! The more tidy and organized you keep the small spaces the easier it will be to access!

So there we go that's it for the closets today! If you would like some more detail on how I keep my closets clean check out this post, it was one of the first I ever did and it has some helpful ideas!