As part of my process, I usually perform a wardrobe assessment to determine the status of a client’s closet. We walk through their closet to determine what items work for them and what items they need. After years of seeing people’s closets I’ve learned it’s very uncommon that people designate closet areas for maintenance of clothing or planning of outfits. As a result, they can have rumpled clothes in hallways, cluttered bedrooms, and crammed closets.

Here are 5 sections of your wardrobe that you may want to carve out specific areas for in order to better organize your life:

1 – Tailoring: I recommend designating an area to collect items that need tailoring. I find that unless the items is something I wear often, I procrastinate on getting it tailored but if I have a collection of items, I’ll take the initiative to go get them tailored. This builds in an efficient process to go into to the tailor.

2 – Dry cleaning: Similar to a tailoring section, batch collect your dry cleaning items in a section of your closet

3 – Returns: Those of you who like to try on items with your existing clothes before committing to new clothes, may find a pile of potential returns stacking up. I find this is the part of the closet most people don’t plan for which leaves them with amazon boxes and shopping bags on the floor.  If you designate an area of your closet or living space to temporarily store those returns, you’ll reduce clutter and make your life more manageable. I personally keep them in the closet near the front door so I don’t forget to return them.

4 – Holding area: This is an area of your closet to store items you are trying to decide whether to keep or not. Perhaps they are pieces you haven’t worn in a while, have never worn, or think no longer fit well in your wardrobe. I recommend labeling them with a date you want to wear them by (to put pressure on yourself to try to wear them) or else you will toss. Some people give themselves 1 season, 1 year, 1 month…it depends on the item, how much closet space you have, and how you feel about them item.  There is no hard and fast rule, the idea is to recognize there are items you aren’t wearing and to figure out if they really work for you.

5 – Outfit planning: I enjoy having some closet rack space to play around with potential outfits. I’ll pull several items I’m currently enjoying and put them in my “outfit planning” section of the closet rack. This helps me keep in mind those outfits in the upcoming days or week. Then I’ll move items out of that area as I tire of them or want to incorporate other items into my upcoming outfits. It’s a great way to make mornings easier by having a “closet within a closet” to reduce your options and keep you on track as you create outfits.

6 – Donate/sell: As items wear out or clearly don’t fit in your wardrobe anymore, I recommend having a space to store clothes you plan to donate or sell. Whether it’s Goodwill, Dress for Success, or a local thrift store, you can possibly find a new home for your used clothes. I strongly recommend taking the time to do this.

I hope this gives you food for thought as you organize your wardrobe! Sometimes the problem isn’t that we own too many clothes but that we haven’t thought through other areas of our wardrobe.