Simplify Your Morning Routine By Organizing Your Closet
By Pamela Wong
Pamela is a Trained Professional Organizer based in Oakville, Ontario and is the owner of Zen N Organized. She helps homeowners and small business owners transform their homes and home offices into organized spaces. She has a practical, non-judgemental approach to organizing. Her objective is to create functional and harmonious spaces for her clients.
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
~William Morris
Is your closet overstuffed with clothes? Would you like to turn your closet from good to great? Are you ready to keep less, but better?
By rearranging your closet and getting it organized, you will end up with a quicker and more efficient morning routine. No more wasting valuable time in the morning, when you are still half asleep, trying to decide what to wear…Especially if you are not a morning person or if you need to get your children ready in the morning too! The best way to do this is to have a simple, but efficient closet. To be able to save time, energy and have one less thing to have to worry about in the morning. Doesn’t that sound nice?
Ready to get a few extra minutes in the morning? Let’s go through and declutter the closet!
What To Declutter
Let’s be honest. You probably wear about 20% of the clothes in your closet. So why stuff your closet full of clothing that you don’t wear? They are just there sucking the energy out of you. When this stagnant energy is removed, it will create clarity and a new, positive energy will enter your life.
The first step is to take everything out of your closet and then follow these easy steps:
1. Items that are ripped/torn
Remember the goal is to be quick in the morning. You want to choose what you wear, put it on and be ready to go. Having ripped/torn clothes will only slow you down as your look will be incomplete, and you don’t want to have to waste more time in the morning to look presentable.
2. Items that no longer fit
Yes, that includes the expensive dress that you USED TO fit into. It serves no purpose other than being clutter in your closet. Give it to a friend or donate it and make more room for something that you look great in!
3. Items that are outdated
When will these items come back in style? 10 years? 20 years? When will you be wearing them again? In the meantime, they are only creating less room in your closet.
4. Items that no longer serves your current lifestyle
Remember the objective is to have an efficient closet that allows you to quickly find what you want to wear and feel great in it. Items that no longer serves your current lifestyle will not provide the quick and amazing outfit that you are looking for. How often do you need to be in business attire? How about cocktail dresses and evening gowns? How many yoga pants do you have? How many do you need? Be true to yourself and keep only the treasures!
What To Keep
After eliminating the donate and trash piles using steps 1-4 above, you are ready to go to the next steps to figure out what to keep. There are 3 main strategies to further cut down on what you own so that your morning routine can be simplified.
1. Use the 90 percent rule
Rate each item and give it a score. Which items make you feel confident while wearing it? Which pieces give you the image that you want to portray? Keep only items that have a score over 90%. Be decisive and be honest!
2. Keep the treasures only
Keep what you absolutely love and show them off. Make sure they are not buried under the mediocre items. Make them visible and accessible.
Remind yourself, “Clothing that you don’t wear clutters your life and prevent what really matters to shine through.”
Learn to say no to the “average” so that there’s room for the “amazing” clothing to be at the forefront!
Organize Your Closet
We often think about getting inspired from a fresh coat of paint or a new décor piece in the home or office and you may not necessarily think that your closet can give you inspiration too.
Organize your closet into a few sections – tops, bottoms (shorts, pants and skirts), dresses, jackets etc. Then sort the items for each section by colour similar to a pack of pencil crayons. For example, sort all the tops from white, yellow, orange and so on all the way to black and grey. Within the whites, sort by sleeves’ lengths (e.g. white tank tops, then white short-sleeves t-shirts, then white long-sleeves t-shirts). Continue to the next colour and so on. Once all the tops are organized, then go to the next section (e.g. bottoms).
How does this organization help your morning routine? Here’s an example:
Start the day with the colour that you feel like wearing (e.g. red). Go to that colour section in your closet and find the top you want. Then look for a matching bottom (e.g. blue jeans).
Before organizing your closet, your morning routine includes digging through piles of clothes to find the one piece of clothing that you really want to wear. There are probably times where you give up looking because you are short on time and decide to just wear the shirt that is on the top of that pile. You are not happy with it as you had really wanted to wear the special top you had in mind. Now your morning hasn’t turned out the way you wanted and before you even leave the house, you are already stuck with a negative mindset.
With an organized closet, you know exactly where to find the top that you had in mind, you easily find a matching bottom and off you go to a great start of the day.
Interested in making a change to the better? Then let’s get started!
Taking command of your life, means taking control of your closet too! Planning your wardrobe is one of the easiest ways to make your morning routine simpler and faster.
