A BUSY MOM’S CLOSET
When I visited Meline’s apartment for a consultation, one thing was immediately clear. We had a busy working mom that needed extra hands!
Scroll down for the “after” picture!
Moms are superheroes…working moms, stay at home moms, full time moms, part time moms, moms in a relationship, single moms… it does not matter what your circumstances are. If you are a mom, you’ve got your hands full. Your closet, or pretty much any part of your space, is always or, at the very best, sometimes messy.
Meline is the ultimate fashionista. She said that she loves fashion and dressing up but her closet does not show it in any way. Things keep piling up and she does not know where to even start from. Starting might be a daunting task for the client - that’s why they get in touch with me -but for me that is the most exciting task of all: figuring out what goes where and how. If you can’t hire a professional organizer, here are my tips for you.
Start small. Keep your expectations low in order not to get overwhelmed. Instead of thinking in terms of the finished product, think in terms of one small task at a time. It builds confidence in your abilities as you go and also makes the task seem and feel more manageable. For example, if you have clothing all over the floor/the dresser, hang those first. Don’t decide if they’re going to stay hung or folded yet. That will come later. First, simply get everything up. Here’s a bonus tip. The same technique applies to other areas of life. If you have 100 emails in your inbox, instead of thinking about having a clean inbox, think about answering or deleting just that day’s emails. The next day, answer and delete that day’s and the previous day’s. Keep doing it every day and soon you will be done with all 100. Every day that you do this, you will be reminded that your actions have a direct effect on the outcome and things won’t seem as overwhelming any more. Psychologist Shawn Achor, calls this method the “Zorro circle”. I apply it to any overwhelming task.
If you have more time that day, you can start step 2. Figure out whether you have room elsewhere for things that you don’t want inside your closet, such as extra pillows and comforters. If not, find a solution for them. Luckily, Meline had some large storage containers under her bed that we decided to use for the extras. If she didn’t have space, we would find room for them inside the closet regardless. Vacuum bags would be ideal for making those bulkier items fit.
After storing the extras outside the closet, take a moment and reassess. Are you feeling tired? Take a break. Have you done enough for one day? Take the rest of the day off. Start again tomorrow.
Time for the next step. Do you have any drawers inside your closet? Meline had a dresser with 4 drawers. Usually I like to use the drawers for things that I don’t necessarily want to display. In her case, we chose them for lingerie, workout clothes, home clothes, bedding, and baby’s everyday clothes. As we were organizing the drawers, Meline started folding the baby’s everyday clothes. I told her that if she expected those clothes to stay folded, pretty quickly it would turn into the same mess again. Her busy lifestyle would most likely not allow her to fold them after each laundry session. Pretty quickly they would find their way on top of the dresser again as before. As an alternative I suggested putting the 2 brown baskets that she already had in her closet inside a drawer: one for the bottoms and one for the tops. She would save so much time and effort if she simply dumped the baby’s clothes in the two baskets after each laundry. Since the baby only wore them at home and most were stained anyway, they really did not need to be ironed and wrinkle free.
Time for the next step. After doing the above steps, look and see if there’s anything else left that’s not to be hung or displayed. In Meline’s case there was still a small pile of miscellaneous objects. We categorized them into 3 categories: electronics, memories/albums and documents. We put them in boxes and displayed the boxes on the shelves.
The last step is to organize the clothes into categories: tops, bottoms, outerwear, dresses. After categorizing them, I like to color code them darkest to lightest. Sometimes I take the length into consideration as well. Try to have the items that you reach out for most often closest to you. We sold or donated most of the items that didn’t make the final cut.
And voilà! This is what we ended up with!
Comment below if you try the steps and find them helpful. If you would like me to do it for you, reach out! I would love to help!
Yours Truly,
Sona
