What is the best way to sort your clothes? Have you found yourself magically losing garments and forgetting what you have?  Do you “stumble upon” clothes rather than gracefully picking them from an organized and color coded grid? If this sounds familiar, I have a solution that might work for you. Taking inspiration from no other than a real life engineer, I dove into the task of organizing my closet to maximize my flexibility and minimize my effort when figuring out what to wear.

Lately, my desire to not buy anything new for a while has caused me to wear a very small percentage of my total garments, which is fine because I’ve only worn my favorite ones, but things get complicated when you get sick of looking the same and you best shorts start getting stinky. A quick count of my items leads me to believe that I have over 100 pieces of clothing (not including underwear, accessories, shoes or purses). How did I get stuck wearing around 15% of my clothes?  Spatial distribution and limited closet space can make it difficult to know exactly how many things you have.

The word sustainability has two meanings here:

• In its broader sense, used to describe the endurance of a system or process.
• in ecological terms, as the way in which biological systems stay diverse and productive. This is the aspect in which sustainable fashion has tried to contribute by changing the way clothes are made in terms of materials and resources employed.

The two concepts are tied by the fact that your perception about the clothes you already own is a determinant factor of your future purchases. A simple closet organization techniques can change your perspective on your wardrobe’s quality and make you hold on to shopping for new items, which is a great way of reducing your fashion footprint. Maybe a Venn Diagram will better explain what I mean:

In this post, I will reveal the technique of my beloved Nick, who, for many years tried to get me into his method. Today, I am a convinced woman and I decided to adopt his wardrobe organizational system. Here is my guide to organize the perfect sustainable wardrobe

 

The row

Having your clothes organized according to recent use can make it easier to wear everything you have at some point. The way I’ve seen it work well is when you have an upper and lower clothing rack, up for tops, down for bottoms; then each row is sorted by some major category (i.e: long sleeve shirts, t-shirts, pants, shorts, short shorts, ultra short short shorts). Going from left to right, you will use some combination of the existing garments, as you use and wash, the recently washed items would go at the end of the row, to help you use the ones you haven’t used yet first and only once you are done with everything, then you can repeat.

At first, of course, this didn’t make any sense to me. I wear some clothes several times before washing them (sometimes way too many…) and I wear certain things obsessively, like black tops, for example. I decided I would give the row model a try and it wouldn’t matter, since I would still be able to spot my favorite stuff anyway. This made me realize I simply don’t wear a good percentage of my clothes and that I might have to do something with them, since they are taking up closet space. Recently, I’ve been finding new uses for old clothes that I had stopped wearing, but you can’t kid yourself, If you know you aren’t ever going to wear it, say goodbye. I identified a couple things I could dye black to actually be able to wear them and I really didn’t get rid of anything just yet.

Here is how I organized my rows (from left to right):

Top row

• Coats. Since I don’t wear them that often, they don’t need to be the easy thing to access.
• Jackets/Blazers. More important, easier access and good to consider for formal and casual dress codes.
• Black and white layering items. I put together all the things I can wear on top of anything or and mix and match to change the style or silhouette of an outfit.
• Black tops. ♥
• Color tops. Less favorite, but I promise to try to wear them more.

 

 

Bottom row

• Pants. I put some of my work pants first, since they can be great for going out and I don’t wear them that often since I don’t have a traditional soul sucking job.
• Skirts. Often overlooked as a work item, I rediscovered my black pencil skirt and will be wearing it soon.
• Shorts. This exercise made me notice a have a ton of shorts, yay!

 

 

Fuck categories

If you are like me, you have your work clothes, your going out clothes, weekend clothes, boring family activity clothes and the very feared proctologist’s office clothes. But how convenient would it be if your clothe could fit any occasion with a few minor tweaks. I have decided to forget about the “clothes for each occasion” concept. All clothes are good for every occasion!

The key for me is black. Black pants are my favorite basic and they are great for pretty much everything, throw in a cute clutch, some strappy sandals and you are ready to go anywhere.

 

How to deal with drawers

The only rule for drawers is: don’t use drawers. Traditionally, I had used drawers only for underwear, socks and other small things, but then due to lack of hanging space, it became a place for everything that wasn’t essential, workout clothes and beach clothes. That madness had to stop, so I decided to reorganize my drawers as follows, I had three to work with :

– My underwear and socks stayed in the same place, but I made clearer divisions and relocated some miscellaneous items.

 

An additional thing I did was to stack things alternating colors, so that I’m always 1 away from black or white, rather than putting all white and all black items together.

– My miscellaneous and workout clothing drawer became a better defined sportswear and light tops collection. I like wearing sports bras and workout tops sometimes for non workout activities, so it’s nice to have them better organized and easy to find.

 

– My clusterfuch drawer had everything, from bathing suits to lace tops in it. Now it’s a well organized second bests selection. I decided I was going to have my most colorful items there, since whenever there are many black things folded, you have to go through each one to identify what you want. I also had I put on the top the things I would rather wear sooner. So, this became the colorful clothing drawer.

 

Again, this seemed to be the method that worked for me, find what works best for your lifestyle and try to design an intelligent set of rules that is easy to implement.

 

Props

The whole point of this is to help you not have to buy that many things, so you shouldn’t have to buy a lot of extra racks and hangers. In my case, there is one thing I was missing: a shoe rack, so I got one and it works and looks great! It helped me put all the shoes at the bottom of my closet in a place where I can see them easily and I like the way they look in my bedroom. I also used it for clutches and other bags. I got mine at Costco and it was $15, excellent value for the price.

 

 

 Identify your basics

Here are some of mine. Having them clearly mapped out can simplify your life.

 

By the way, there is not a unique basics definition, you decide what is a basic item for you and that’s the whole secret.

 Key takeaways

In order to design a system that works for you:

• Identify your objectives, whether shrinking your selection, directing your style in a different direction or making it faster to get ready every morning; the best solutions will depend on those objectives.
• Realize that you already have a lot and take a moment to understand how fortunate you are.
• Remember that buying things doesn’t make you happier and the opposite could be true in the long run.
• My better organized space has made me feel better, the work I put into this has really paid out.
• It’s like expanding your wardrobe without buying anything!

 

 

 

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Credits

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Don’t miss my next posts on a daily hike project and how to have an eco-friendly wedding anniversary.

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