How to de-clutter your bedroom

Have you made your wardrobe redundant?

Wardrobes are one of the worst culprits for accumulating clutter; their doors hide a multitude of sins, as many of us simply can’t resist shoving everything we’re not currently wearing inside them and out of sight. This tends to lead to the wardrobe being downgraded to the status of a storage box, while the clothes we wear day-to-day wind up on chairs, tables and other surfaces. This is a shame – not only because having clothes strewn around creates a lot of additional mess, but also because it’s bad for your clothes.

So, the first questions to ask yourself when you come to de-clutter your bedroom are: are you making the best use of your wardrobe? Are you even using it as a wardrobe at all? If the answer is ‘no’, then you need to think about a wardrobe revamp.

Wardrobe 101

First, ensure the rest of your bedroom is tidy enough to provide a few clear surfaces for sorting through the clothes and other items you’re about to remove from the wardrobe. You never know quite what’s going to emerge from there!

Next, take everything out of the wardrobe and sort it into categories. If you want to get super-organised, now may also be the time draw up a ‘map’ of where you want everything to go. There’s an example here of a closet plan, with spaces reserved for shoes, accessories, nightwear and so on: this will help keep you focused once you’ve sorted through the items you want to keep and come to put them back inside.

Now it’s time to make some decisions on how much you want to keep and what you can manage without. Think about how often you actually wear things: are there pairs of shoes in there that look lovely taking up space on your shelf but pinch your toes so badly they’ve only ever left the house once or twice? If so, they need to go straight into your charity shop pile. Any rips or broken zips? Take them to your local tailor. It’s also worth looking at what condition your hangers are in: flimsy old hangers that are falling apart are not worth keeping, and if you can limit yourself to just one set of identical ones, the over-all effect will be much neater. Invest in a new set from a department store.

Space solutions
Before you start piling everything back in again, think about how well you’re using the space. Could you add some extra shelves? I was inspired by Monica over at Crafty Nest who created a simple shelving unit out of plywood (available from your local DIY store) to fit into her wardrobe to house her sizeable shoe collection. To organise her footwear further, she’s installed a set of plastic shoe boxes, which you can find at most home furnishing stores.

Instructions on how to make ‘shoebox shelves’ can be found here.

Tags: declutter your wardrobe, organise your clothes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 6:18 pm and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.