Tag: clothes

9 Questions to Ask Yourself In Your Closet This Week

I spend a lot of time in people’s closets.  I love saying that, it is quite the conversation starter!  But it’s true!  I spent an hour, just an hour, in a closet last week with a client, and we made great progress in reclaiming her space!Image

(1)   What is already designated to leave?

Remove it! 

Often when I arrive to help a client clean out his or her closet, there is already a pile of “donations” started.  And perhaps a bag of items to go to the cleaners or the tailor, or a pile of shoes that need repaired.  Or maybe it’s just the overflowing laundry hamper (though I personally would not put dirty laundry in a closet with my clean clothes).

Remove those bags / piles / baskets first, and put them in your car to be dropped off later.  Or take the dirty laundry to your laundry room and start a load.  See, the closet looks better already.

(2)   What will I absolutely not wear again before next Fall?

Put it away for the season. 

There are clothes in your closet from the winter that you will probably not wear again, no matter how cold it gets again this Spring (I know, I live in Chicago).  Perhaps they are Fall colors, or for specific events that won’t roll around again until October.  Items like formal pieces, heavy sweaters and scarves, boots, etc. can probably go away.  Make sure they are clean, and then put them in a container tucked on a shelf or under the bed until Fall. Image

(3)   What will I absolutely never wear again, period?

Let it go.  For good.

Come on, you know the pieces.  The ones that you look at, and you get the furrow between your eyebrows, trying to determine…

(4)   Why on earth did I buy that item? (Maybe it was on sale?)

(5)   What was my loved one thinking when they bought it for me? (And remember the gesture, not the fact that they are not paying attention!)

(6)   When will I ever wear that thing again?  (You probably won’t.)

If you can’t come up with good answers to these questions, it is time to ease out the offending items.  Sell them, donate them, give them to a friend who would look better in them.  Just move them out of your space for good.

And ask yourself a couple more questions, to move along those questionable “Maybe’s”:

(7)   If I was in a store right now, would I buy this item again? (thanks Tamika!)

(8)   Does this item really reflect who I am, and will it ever?

If the answers to these are “No”, the items has to go.  Now.  Trust me.

(9)   What would be better stored somewhere else in my house?

Put it there.

Very often, we run across things in a clothes closet that would be better stored somewhere else.  Papers, Christmas Decorations, furniture, reusable shopping bags, you name it – it may even have a home somewhere else in your house already, and you just need to spend the 5 minutes and put it away.

Wow, 9 simple questions and a little time spent in your closet, and your clothes and space are looking better already!  Way to Go!

Organizing Bedrooms with Your Kids

This past week, my son and I did a clean sweep of his bedroom.  The room is usually clean, but periodically we all need to review our stuff and our space, so that is what we did!  We reviewed toys, books and clothes.  We kept a lot, purged some and re-allocated a bit, and it looks and feels great in there now!kid clean sweep

So, the first question is “How do we organize a bedroom?”  And the other part is the kid-specific part – “How do we organize with our kids?”

I like organizing with kids. Like all of us, they like to share details about what is important to them.  In addition, organizing with kids gives them an opportunity to share their opinions about stuff and space which gives them a sense of control and ownership in the organizing process.  They are receptive to new ideas, too!  Here’s what you do….

  1. Clear 2-4 hours in the schedule, dependent on your schedule and your child’s age and attention span.
  2. With your child, determine destinations for the purge items and label bags accordingly.  The paper bags lined up in my son’s room are labeled “garbage”, “recycle”, “sell”, “donate – toys”, “donate – library”, clothes for “swap.com” and binsfor cousin “Joshua”.  A garage sale could be a destination, too.
  3. Start a pile of “go elsewhere in our home” items by the door, including dirty laundry, to maintain focus and avoid running items here and there during your project time.
  4. Grab a notebook to jot down ideas and to-dos as they occur to you (“buy new sneakers for school”, “return borrowed toy to xxxxx’s house”)
  5. Start small; really small.  Everyone gets overwhelmed at times.  If you are feeling overwhelmed and snarky about the bedroom project, imagine how your child must feel.  Tackle small spaces one by one instead of all together.  My son and I started with 2 storage cubes, then book case, then toy box, then closet.  And I reviewed his clothes while he made decisions about toys and books.  We tackled our project based on Julie Morgenstern’s SPACE method of organizing.
  6. Sort what you have: We sort toys and books based on type and clothes based on size and season.
  7. Purge items to your various destinations.  We purge based on condition, developmental age, size and season and / or interest level. Give yourself or your child a chant to help review items and stay focused.  For example, I worked with a young man last week who was deciding what to do with his books.  His repeated question was” Keep, sell, give to sister?  Keep, sell, sister?”  Over and over, with each book.donate books and dvds
  8. We Assign a home to and Containerize the items we keep.  Quite often, items go right back where they came from, especially clothes to the closet and dresser, or books to the bookshelf.  But tackling these projects presents a great opportunity to re-think your storage! We took this opportunity to move a toy sorter out of the closet and into the basement for use with the Legos, and moving the sorter out of the closet opened up lots of space for other things.
  9. “Equalize” is the fifth step in Morgentstern’s SPACE, and is a fancy word for maintenance.  So we equalize every time we tidy up, throw out papers, donate outgrown or beat-up clothes, etc.

Specifically, organizing with kids

  1. Let the papers go.  No, really, let them go.  The grades are complete, homework is      done.  Let the papers go.  Keep a few items from each year, but I guarantee you, your child will not care about every paper ever produced much past junior high.  Handing him or her bins full of old paper when he or she starts their own home will not be appreciated.
  2. Cultivate giving and purging from birth. My boys are used to purging old clothes, and donating used toys and clothes.  It’s a good habit to form.
  3. Provide a plastic container (sweater size, 6-12 qt size) for treasures.  But no larger than that.
  4. Grab your camera, to take pictures of large art projects so you can purge the project without losing the memory.  A picture of the catapult they made in class takes up a lot less space than the actual catapult!

So, take courage and spend some time organizing with your kids this week!  The bedroom will look better, you will learn some new things about your child, and you will both cultivate your organizing habits!