Five Easy Ways to Organize Your Clothes

My bed and arm chair make a perfectly decent war zone to lay out outfits. But things pile up, and then I never want to put them back, which infallibly unravels even the most freshly organized closet. Screwing in this one little valet hook to a bit of wall space or back of my door would fix everything. Everything. It'd all be less cluttered if I just had a specific place to lay out outifts or hang dry cleaning so that I can see what's there and remember to put it back in the right place. (And as bonus, it folds up flat, so I won't walk into it when not using it. Not that I would do that.)

BJarnum Folding Hook, $9.99 for 3, ikea.com

To me, childhood-style organizing—you know, by shape and item: short sleeve shirts in one drawer, long sleeves in another—is about as useful as cataloging a DVD collection by length instead of genre. It's just not how my mind works. Organizing by occasion instead (work-friendly tops, weekend-only shirts) takes just a few minutes more and helps me put together outfits that actually make sense for wherever I'm going. Which is usually the first thing in my mind when getting dressed, anyway.

As much as I love a pretty shoe box (Miu Miu's soft pink ones; French Sole's leopard print) I know they're not practical for every day access. Like, at all: just think how long it takes the shoe store guy to wrangle out the right pair even in an ultra-organized setting. Instead, I'm investing in individual drawers that are both a) totally see-though and b) easy to open horizontally. They're stackable in a zillion different configurations, and don't have the ickiness of  behind-the-door shoe racks, which press dirty soles up next to clothes. Eww.

Clear Shoe Drawer, $7.99, thecontainerstore.com

Since I have more hanging space than folding space, it seemed only logical to hang those things people would otherwise fold. But it only creates problems with certain things. Like jeans. In a sea of hangers, I can never tell which pair of blues is which style, so I end up pulling them all out and off the hanger. Folding my jeans instead and labeling the shelf underneath ("wide leg", "skinny", etc) would make this about nine million times easier. Because certain things are really meant to hang and some just need to be folded, regardless of how much space you have for each.

I feel like I need five of these drawer dividers, since keeping track of the little stuff is kinda my biggest challenge. Lumping everything together means I'm not only constantly searching for things, but sometimes I'm accidentally ruining them, too. Thankfully this divider breaks apart and adjusts to different drawer sizes, ensuring I'll never snag a pair of tights on a bra hook again.

Honeycomb Drawer Divider, $8.99, Real Simple, bedbathandbeyond.com