Have you ever seen the closet of a really wealthy person? Me neither. But I have seen the closet of almost every Real Housewife on Bravo. Every item of clothing has its own personalized home. There are doors and compartments and sometimes even a beautiful chandelier. Yeah, that’s not my closet. 🙂
My closet is full of disheveled clothes interspersed with empty wire, plastic and wood hangers. I have piles of sweaters and sweatshirts mixed along with my summer clothes that I tried to shove in the corner shelf. Now before you judge me too much, I should tell you, this USED to be my closet. I don’t have the money to make my closet as fabulous as a tv star’s but I have do have great tips on how to organize closet space on a tight budget.
How to Organize Closet Space on a Tight Budget
- Keep an empty bin in your closet for empty hangers. This could be a box from Costco or the old laundry basket with the broken handle! When you take an item of clothing off of the hanger, place it in the bin. It makes the hangers easy to find on laundry day and also keeps a cleaner look in your closet.
- Store your most-used items at eye level, less-used items below, and least-used items up high because let’s face it–no one likes to reach all the way up in the top of the closet in the morning!
- Do your dresses fall off the hangers like mine do? An easy solution is to wrap pipe cleaners around your hangers so that your clothes don’t fall off. Speaking of hangers shop at garage sales or second-hand stores for them. I love having matching hangers but buying them can get expensive. Buying them used is a great way to get them a bargain price.
- Use command hooks on your closet wall for purses, bags or even jewelry. These hooks are cheap and sturdy and help the purses keep their shape without being smashed against one another.
- Always keep a laundry bin in your closet. Then as you are changing your clothes they instantly go into the laundry bin—and not on the floor!
- Organize your clothes into categories. For example short sleeve shirts, long sleeve shirts, dresses, etc. This makes it easier to find what you are looking for on a busy day and also to stay organized when putting your laundry away.
- Get rid of old clothes no matter how attached you are to them. You are never going to wear your old ratty high school basketball shirt so part ways and let it go.
- Add a lamp or battery-operated stick-on tap lights in those dark corners. When your closet is well-lit you can make decisions faster and you are less likely to shove things in that dark corner. C’mon we’ve all done that at least once…right?
- Make more room in your closet by storing out-of-season clothes in boxes up high or under the bed. I love to save the bags that new comforters come in. They are pliable and see through so you can see what clothes are stored in them in case you need to get an out-of-season item out of storage. You can also use suitcases to store out-of-season clothes, blankets or sweaters.
Do you have any budget-friendly closet organization tips?
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Try http://www.freecycle.org for hangers and other storage needs such as comforter bags or plastic see-through boxes. I’ve gotten quite a few of my hangers this way. You can post your needs, or just creep the listings of “stuff” people are looking to unload!
Great stuff, as usual! I have always kept a laundry bin in my closet for dirty laundry, I just called it “the floor.” Here is a something I did where I used a regular closet with a coat rack for my utility closet. I seemed to be always tripping over the darn buckets, so I hung them from the coat rail using bungees, carabiners, and even wire hangers. Ditto bags of rags. Sponges and brushes just stayed in the buckets. Stick vacuum hung on the wall. This left the floor area clear for heavy tool boxes and cans of solvents, paints etc.
I don’t have a spare inch in my tiny closet for a bin just for hangers, what a luxury that would be! I walk my lazy butt out to the laundry area and hang up the now-empty hangers as soon as I’m dressed. I make my family do the same thing. We live in a very tiny house with no attic, so everything we wear in all four seasons is in our closets and dresser drawers. We each have one of those hanging shoe shelves, We do use flat, plastic bins with lids for off-season bulky winter wear, and keep them under thebeds, but no ccardboard boxes- they attract spiders and dust bunnies. I have to make myself purge my closet, or it would explode. If I didn’twear that jacket this winter, it gets listed ffor sale on Poshmark. Same with a pair of boots, or sweater. If it doesn’t sell in a month, it gets donated to a thrift store that funds the local food bank.
I love the idea of a bin for hangers. So simple! I group clothes by color, so I can tell if I have accumulated too many white buttondowns or black tees. Redundancies or no-fits go into storage. I also tend to collect (ahem!) a lot of shoes. I leave seldom-used ones in the box (or A box) and put a photo of the pair on the outside, within view. I also group shoes by season. My mom, who has a shoes collection to rival Imelda Marcos, does the same thing but also groups them by color.