I know there are tons of posts about closet organization and I don’t want to compete with the beautiful closet styling you will find out there in blog land. I’m not here to tell you to arrange your clothes in rainbow order or even by type of item. I have just one rule when it comes to my personal closet organization and that is, matching hangers. Buy them once, and you are on your way to a pared down, well edited closet. (I bought mine in bulk off of Amazon Prime.)
The number of hangers you require and the appropriate type (wood, velvet lined, plastic, etc.) are not for me to decide, but my simple rule is this; the number of hangers I have in my closet house all the clothes I get to keep. That’s it. Easy Peasey. If I run out of hangers, I need to edit my wardrobe. This is what keeps my closet fresh and up-to-date. If it’s an item that’s not in my regular rotation, it goes. If it’s worn out, stained or needs to be replaced, it goes. You get the gist. I find that I feel less guilty about buying new clothing items this way because I know what I have, I tend not to buy anything that I won’t wear, and when I do purchase an item, it is guaranteed a hanger spot. Even if it means that something older or redundant has to go…
In my busy existence, I don’t hang on to or feel remorse when editing my personal belongings. Especially not when it comes to clothes. My philosophy may not jive with everyone because I’m the type who doesn’t really care if I wear the same three shirts and jeans every week if I love them. I admittedly don’t live the life of a fashionista, and as long as it makes me look presentable and makes me feel great wearing it, that’s all I really care about. Therefore, I am constantly editing and refining. Same goes for my children’s clothes. They have a set of matching hangers in their shared closet and the same simple rule applied to their wardrobe selections takes the guess work out of what they really need. This system has yet to translate to the editing stage for my husband’s portion of the closet, but I’m working on it. “Meh…” Well at least his hangers match between an occasional dry cleaner hanger…
So give it a try! It may or may not work for your clothes editing purposes in the long term as it has for me, but at least you will have beautiful matching hangers for all your hanging items. (I suppose this begs for a post on how to best display your folded items so nothing ever gets lost at the bottom of a pile or shoved into the back of a drawer…) In any case, I think this one simple change will in the least, visually unify the look and spacing of items in your closet interior and maybe even gently force a reconsideration of what’s actually in there.
Happy Editing!
-K