Tiny House Organizing - Clothing Storage

More organizing at the Tiny House!

This week I went through my clothing storage. You may already know that we decided to capsule wardrobe our clothes. By going through our stuff and removing things we never wore, sticking to a color pallete, and pre-planning outfits, we have eliminated the need for a closet. I have 6 drawers, T has 3.

They started out nice, but over the time / washing / refolding / stuffing things where there was available space - it was getting hard for me to find the clothes I wanted to wear. That problem is now fixed and all it took was a little tape, a sharpie, and a pair of scissors.

How To -

Think: If you'd like to sort your drawers - first it is important to figure out what you have in there and what you want in there, and those may be two separate things.

Categorize: I thought about all my clothes and separated them into categories. The categories I ended up with were:

Skirts

Pants

Work shirts

T-Shirts

Tank Tops

Party Dresses

Work dresses

Athletics

Swimwear

Leggings

Sweaters

Jackets / Blazers

Special Occasion / Rare Use

Then I went through the drawers and made piles of clothes in each category. There was no need to dump things out, I left them folded but just grouped them into areas on my bed. For a while it was hard to separate Party Dresses from my Special Occasion clothes but then I realized Special Occasion would be better used as a category for things like Halloween costumes and my wedding dress - things I don't want to donate but that I really don't wear very often.

Group: After everything was sorted it became clear what groups of clothes would fit into a drawer. While it may make sense in my mind to put Work Shirts and Work Dresses in the same drawer since they are both work-related, there wasn't enough physical space to fit both of those groups into the same drawer. By grouping things according to how much physical space they took up I was able to find room for everything with out cramming and wedging things to fit.

Restore: Putting everything in it's place took a few tries. I had to sort which clothes I wanted to reach the easiest. I did that by deciding which category of clothes I wore the most - for me, that's work clothes, so I put them at the top. Then athletic / casual clothes came next. Last were party dresses, special occasion, and T-shirts.

Label: Once I'd swapped drawer locations a few times and made sure everything was in the right place I grabbed some masking tape and a sharpie and some scissors. Making the labels was pretty easy - just make sure your letters are facing the way you can read them :-) If you are not using wire racks but have wooden drawers - you may want to consider painters tape rather than masking tape so it doesn't hurt the finish. Another, and very fancy option, might be washi tape or printing out the drawer categories on return address label stickers. You could also use colored markers, colored tape, or even post-it notes.

Now, when T or I are doing the laundry it is easy to put stuff away - we know right where it goes. It is also easier to find specific items - if I need a sweater, I go to the sweater section etc. There is no more wasted time or stress over finding things to wear. Also, this has made sorting my outfits for the week so much faster!