More Love, Less Stuff

That’s “America’s Most Organized Man”, Andrew Mellen’s moto.  He is passionate about organization, sustainability and mindfulness. We’re thrilled to welcome him as a featured contributor and today we’ll start with his “Organizational Triangle” an amazingly simple way to get organized and stay that way.

The Organization Triangle

Andrew Mellen was a huge hit at our recent Renewal Summit and here he is explaining his “Organization Triangle”.

11 simple ways to organize your clothes and closets.

Here are 11 simple and practical tips, tools and guidelines for organizing your clothes and closets.

1) Edit your wardrobe.

Really. As in other areas of life, more isn’t better if the volume of things makes using those things difficult and challenging. It’s common knowledge among professional organizers that we typically wear 20% of our wardrobe 80% of the time. Are you the exception? If not, take a long, good look at your clothes and decide what you wear most, least and not at all. Remember to focus NOT on letting things go and feeling the loss—focus instead on finally having enough room in your closet to see your clothes and easily get to the things you like to wear every day. It’s much easier to sustain a positive feeling than to work through a negative one. Bonus points for the sympathetic joy you’ll experience knowing that everything you donate will bring happiness to someone else. Garments that are damaged, stained, stretched out or shrunk get recycled.

2) If you can see it, you can find it.

The whole point of a closet is to gather your clothing into one room—so you can easily find and access things. After you’ve edited your clothes, now you need to arrange them.

Instead of relying on lots of gimmicky tools to cram more into the closet than you need—see #1 above—let’s be smart about how you store things so you can easily see them and retrieve them … and even more importantly, put them away.

Every step you have to take to put something away becomes a potential obstacle to using something. This applies outside of the closet as well, so keep that in mind when cooking up clever ways to store things that involve multiple moving parts. If it’s too cumbersome, you’ll stop using your clever solution faster than you can say, “this sucks. Who thought this up anyway?!”

That said, there are plenty of specialty organizing devices on the market—try them out in the store before you bring them home. Sure they seem like great ideas in The Container Store. How likely are you to actually use those tiered hangers to stack your skirts or pants? Or will you just wear the top one over and over again becuase it’s easy to get to?

3) Pick a system for storing shoes.

Choose one and stop fussing and confusing yourself. The best choice is the one that maximizes your storage space and is easy to use. Remember, cumbersome will be a burden when you’re in a rush regardless of how pretty it looks in a magazine. Really consider how you live then choose between a shoe rack on the floor, hanging shoe organizers, see-through plastic boxes or even the original shoe boxes (with photos attached to the ends or sides of them so you can easily see what’s inside the opaque box).

4) Rotate clothes seasonally, either inside the closet or between closets.

For those of us in urban areas without attics, basements or other auxiliary storage spaces, it can be helpful to swap out clothes you won’t be wearing for a few seasons. No need to keep the shorts front and center during a New England winter. Likewise your bulky sweaters don’t need to be taking up prime real estate in your Los Angeles closet in July.

5) Organize hanging garments by type and color.

Slacks, trousers, jeans, shirts, jackets and blouses should all be sorted first by sleeve length and then by shade. The second leg of The Organizational Triangle® is Like With Like—using it to arrange your clothing means that you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for as soon as you open the closet door.

If you’re a bit fussier, you may want something like these dividers to clearly mark where one section ends and another begins.

6) Choose the right hanger.

Your closet will look neater and function easier if you use just one type of hanger—wood, wire, or plastic. The one exception is for jackets and coats—they need sculpted jacket hangers to keep the shape of the shoulders from sagging and puckering.

7) Set up zones.

Just like in the kitchen, keep zones of kinds of clothes in mind when deciding where to store what. No point in wasting tall storage with short skirts and blouses—use it for longer dresses and slacks. Find a low rod for those shorter garments. Don’t be afraid of getting a step stool out to help you reach high shelves—they are great places to stash out-of-season sweaters, shoes and other accessories.

8) Arrange folded items.

Don’t shove them on a shelf in a random stack. You don’t want to fight your way through a bunch of sweatshirts to get to your cashmere knit set. Any clothing that will stretch out of shape should never be hung on a hanger—you could drape it over the rod but it’ll take up more space that way and be harder to spot when searching for it.

When organizing folded clothing on shelves, place heavier, bulkier items at the bottom of each stack, and lighter ones at the top. After folding them in a uniform way, arrange the garments by function (workout clothes, casual tops, business or dressier tops, etc.) and then by color (white to nude to bright colors to black).

9) Use garment bags.

The preferred material is canvas for garment bags—not vinyl or any other kind of plastic or synthetic material. You want something that breathes while also protecting your fine suits, dresses and jackets.

10) Deal with dry cleaning when you get it home.

Don’t wait until you’re racing around to try to rip something out of those plastic bags and then leave the crumpled bag on your closet floor. When you bring things home from the dry cleaners, take a few minutes to remove everything from the dry-cleaning bags and transfer them onto your own hangers. Be a sport and then return the wire hangers to your dry cleaner for reuse or recycling.

11) Contain what doesn’t hang.

Corral any odd shaped, fine or otherwise hard to stack or hang items into containers. Custom drawers are a great choice if you have them and avoid lids if you will struggle with them and end up leaving them on the closet floor to save time. Better to consider this when shopping for baskets or bins. Remember Like With Like when storing socks, undergarments and single types of accessory, like scarves, hats, gloves and small bags or clutches.

Today’s challenge: set a timer for 60 seconds and settle into your breath, then set the timer for 10 minutes.

Review your closet for 8 minutes. Take notes and what you need to do and then use the remaining 2 minutes to schedule a 2-3 hour appointment with yourself on your next day off to get your closet into shape.

BONUS: Bring a bag or box with you to the closet and gather everything you’re already sure you’re finished with to take to a thrift store or consignment shop when you leave the house next.

Watch this video of Andrew discussing his system for organizing your closet on the Nate Berkus show.