Heal Your Love/Hate Relationship with Getting Dressed

You love your closet when it’s freshly organized, colorized, and dusted. It gives you a sense of being grounded, clear, and ready to tackle the day.

You: *breathe a contented sigh*

On the other hand, a few weeks pass since the great closet edit (read here how to) and you’ve forgotten all about the organization of the wardrobe. Things are placed wherever and there's a skirt on the ground, a load of clean-not-folded laundry, and you can’t find your favorite top.

*Storm clouds darken the sky and you hear thunder rolling in the distance*

Keeping your clothes in the closet is a challenge unto itself, which makes for a real love/hate relationship. You heart these pieces, or you did when you pulled out your credit card to purchase them. You painstakingly spot treat and steam and press them. You got the good hangers so the shoulders wouldn’t stretch out. You fold your heavy knits. But the workload still mounts.

In this blog post, we will travel through these things:

• Discover what is actually your struggle with your closet organization
• Create a tailored approach to keeping your closet organized
• 
  

If you are hoping for a closet template or map of where to put your stripes, paisleys, solids organized by color and occasion, this post isn’t for you. We are giving you prompts for self-awareness around your own closet usage habits.

What’s stresses you out about your closet?

In order to customize the organization in your closet, you have to first understand what is causing a pressure point. As always, I am recommending journaling. If that’s not your style, you can get similar clarity and catharsis from using a friend or partner as a sounding board.

1. Think about how you get dressed, when, after or before what activities?
2. Do you face issues finding what you need?
3. Do you have clothes already selected or go to the closet to see what’s available?
4. Are things you need difficult to access?
5. Are you digging through different sections to try to find things?

Keep going. Really work out what doesn’t work about your closet. Once you understand where your stress is coming from, the solution will become clear.

Create a tailored organization strategy

Now that you understand your stresses, you will begin to formulate your strategy. Let me give an example:

EXAMPLE ONE

I am struggling to find things to wear; trying on multiple outfits before I settle for one I am not excited about.

I’m struggling to find things because what I want to wear is in the laundry.

Strategy:

I can either select my outfit the night before so I’m prepped in the morning or I can plan ahead enough to make sure what I want to wear is clean and returned to the closet.

EXAMPLE TWO

I am struggling to find things in my closet. I have to pull things from the back of the closet or dig through drawers or even dive into the laundry basket to figure out where something went.

Strategy:

My closet is not organized correctly to support my personal routine. I need to rethink the placement of my items (pull my faves to front-and-center, put away out-of-season items, donate things I’m really not wearing…)

The point of this exercise is so you understand your own habits while getting dressed and customized your closet to fit the way you need it to function. Once you’ve done about an hour of soul searching and prep, you have turned your love/hate relationship into a full-on wardrobe crush.