Wardrobe Storage
During Wardrobe Consultations, many of my clients ask about storage solutions. What type of clothing is best hung in a wardrobe or folded in drawers.
Wardrobe storage is personal. It's dependent on what your wardrobe looks like and the space you have.
Most of us go to our hanging items first, simply because if you can see it hanging, then you’re more likely to wear it.
Hanging Tips . . .
* Only one garment per hanger
* Hang similar items together – eg. skirts together, trousers together, jackets together etc. This allows you to discover more mix and match possibilities as you start to see what your options are.
* Hang in colour order. Like a rainbow, begin at white and end with brown, grey and black. This way you can easily find your pink top when you’re in a hurry. Plus you discover if you’re rather colour dominant in any way – I will always remember doing a wardrobe audit with one of my clients and she insisted she had no green tops, but we found about 20 of them, but because they weren’t hung together she didn’t realize just how many she had (and kept buying more because she thought she was lacking in green tops.
* Get rid of wire hangers. Why? They can rust and therefore leave marks on your clothes so invest in some decent hangers, such as wooden ones or slim velour hangers.
* Find your wardrobe hot spots and cold spots (where you reach first, and where you reach last). Put your most used garments in your hot spot. Then put your least used in your cold spots (for most of us it’s formal/evening wear). Make it easy for yourself to get dressed, don’t have your most used clothes in a hard to reach place. Example: One of my clients wanted to dress more smart casual than relaxed casual, yet she had all her relaxed casual tops in her wardrobe hot spot, so of course that’s what she reached for each day. We swapped it around, put her smart casual tops in her hot spot and moved those more casual tops to a slightly harder to reach spot so that she’d reach for the clothes that made her look smarter first!
* Make sure you hang skirts on skirt hangers and trousers on trouser hangers. They keep your clothing investment in better condition.
* Use hanging pockets to store accessories, scarves, shoes etc in the hanging portion of your wardrobe – it makes them easy to find and is an economical use of space.
Drawer Tips:
Drawers re great for underwear, hosiery, sleepwear, exercise wear, shorts, beach wear, jeans, but not much else. I can’t tell you how many times when cleaning out drawers with clients they’ve discovered tops that they’d completely forgotten they had because they’d got stuck at the back of a drawer.
Use dividers (or old shoe boxes) to separate smaller items such as underwear, socks and bras and don’t over fill them.
Shelving Tips:
Shelves can be great for larger pieces of knitwear that would get stretched if hung, and that may be too chunky for a drawer.
Tidy shelves frequently, like drawers they can get out of control easily.
Don’t be guilty of storing your old stuff on shelving because you have space. Shelves can often be where old, out of date clothes go to die.
Shelves can also be great for jeans, shorts and exercise wear.
I use shelving for shoes. If you have a decent collection of shoes, shelving is a great way to display them so you can easily find them and incorporate them into your outfit.
Handbags are great stored on shelves. Stand them next to each other so you can easily slide out.
If you need more help with your wardrobe, get in touch.
