Now that it’s officially fall, it’s time to start planning and organizing our fall/winter wardrobes. We’re all busy people. Like everything else in our life, we need a simple system that helps us get dressed and look great every day with minimal time and effort.
Today is the first of a series on planning our fall/winter wardrobes. Today, we’ll be cleaning out and organizing our closets. Then comes the fun part! We’ll plan an ideal wardrobe for this season that actually works for our lifestyle. After that, we’ll write a shopping plan. At the end, we’ll have a wardrobe that is practical, organized, and functional. We’ll have a wardrobe system that helps us to put together great outfits every day, for any occasion! So, let’s get started!
First, we’ve got to clean out the clothes in our closet. We always need to start by taking out our spring/summer clothes and storing them in a different closet, or at least put in a separate section of your closet. Then, take your fall/winter clothes and lay them out on your bed or a hanging rack, if you have one. Go through each piece and make sure it passes all of these criteria:
- Worn out, holes, stains? Toss!
- Still in style? Keep!
- Fits right, flattering for your body type, flattering color? Keep!
- Works for your current lifestyle? Keep!
As you check each piece, put the keepers on one side and the items to give away in a pile on the floor or in a bag. Now we’re going to take the keepers and put them back in the closet in sections. I like to organize my clothes in sections., with a different section for each part of my life. For example, if you don’t work outside the home or work only part-time, you could organize as follows:
- Dressy-Work/Church
- Nice Casual
- At-home Casual
If you work full-time from Monday-Friday, you could organize your wardrobe like this:
- Weekday Clothes (Work)
- Weekend Clothes (Nice Casual and At-home Casual)
After you decide what sections you need, you will put each piece of clothing that you keep into the proper section. And then, within each section, put similar items together, such as pants, skirts, dresses, tops, jackets. Then, within each group of items, such as your “weekday pants”, organize by color, such as darkest to lightest. You now should have your clothes in sections, with ‘like’ items together, and colorized. Then, to the right of all sections, I have a separate section for layering pieces like tanks, camisoles, jackets, and coats.
Now you need to go through your shoes, purses, underclothes, and jewelry. Again, you should check each piece and decide if it is in good condition, still in style, and fits. Put your keepers back and throw the rest in the giveaway pile. Now, stand back and take a look. It should look neat, organized and awesome!
If you feel like you don’t have much left in your closet, don’t worry. It’s better to have quality over quantity. For now on, if you start buying quality pieces, you should have items in your closet that will last for years. Most of you will probably have at least a few good pieces from last year.
That completes the practical, prep work for our fall/winter wardrobes. Next, we’ll be planning out our ideal wardrobe for this season. Then we’ll continue this closet project by looking at what pieces we should add and how to prioritize our list to make it easy and functional!
I hope this will be a fun, helpful project for you. Please leave comments below and let me know how you clean out and organize your wardrobe for fall.
Have a wonderful fall day!