12 Commandments For Organizing Your Closet

12 Commandments for Organizing Your Closet

Why organize your closet?

If may seem like a superficial goal, but it’s really about preserving your investment and lifting your mood. If you know what’s “ready to be worn”, it’s easier to prepare for the day, but if you have to seek-and-find, it can be exhausting. Organizing is also also about mastering “aesthetics” through the ability to view your wardrobe at a glance.

ARE YOU ORGANIZED?

Some of us are more challenged than others when it comes to being organized.

Emma Thompson, in The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay Diaries, once said “Got up this morning and could not find my glasses. Finally had to seek assistance. Kate [Winslet] found them inside a flower arrangement.”

I can tell the same story as Emma Thompson, although with a different result, as my Maison Bonnet glasses were eventually found in the freezer.

I’ve come to understand that being organized is more about “caring” than about being an obsessive bore who approaches organization with the same approach as using a soulless spreadsheet.

Author Victoria Kahler expressed the purpose of organization in an anecdote from her novel “Their Friend Scarlet”:

“When everything was laid out before her, she felt safe, loved even. She was always trying to be more organized than she was. She knew it was weird and blamed her mother, with the lists and notes she’d leave whenever she and Dad went out of town. The labeled dinners in the freezer and the 20 emergency numbers on the phone showed she cared, even when absent, she cared.”

Caring for our clothes and being able to quickly find what we want to wear can clear the mind for other purposes. Efforts used to locate a lost sock or spot-clean a forgotten dirty shirt may not seem like a big deal, but at some point such experiences deplete our energy.

If you like good clothing and are ready to stop making excuses for being disorganized–getting your closet in order will allow you to enjoy your clothing investment. Remember, the absence of organization can eventually become maddening and cause a trap in cerebral thought and inaction, creating irritability and restlessness.

A warning though : obsessive organizational maniacs are more tiring than feeling disorganized. The act of order should bring joy and calmness to life, while the spirit of ‘nit picking, judgmental finger-pointing, and a know-it-all attitude’ destroys a sense of peacefulness.

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