10 Clothes Storage Tips to Maximize Your Space
Is it a struggle to get dressed every day because you have to dig through piles of clothes or a cramped closet? When you don’t have enough clothes storage, it can be extremely frustrating trying to organize your belongings. You end up forgetting what you have, wrinkling or damaging clothes, and feeling overwhelmed. You can solve all these problems with a few simple steps to maximize your space.
To maximize clothes storage, use every inch of space wisely, including the back and side walls of your closet. You can also fold more clothing than you think, and you should store infrequently used items elsewhere or in high places. Get creative with your furniture choices so you can use it as storage, turn jewelry into art, and store accessories creatively.
Some of these tips might seem like obvious solutions, but many people don’t do them. It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut of hanging up clothes and storing them in a conventional way. But, with a bit of thinking outside the box, you can make getting dressed a stress-free experience.
1. Fold As Much As You Can (But Fold It Right)
People often fold things like T-shirts, pajamas, workout clothes, and maybe jeans. But then everything else tends to end up hanging in a closet (or on the floor). If your closet is like most, it’s crammed full of dresses, blouses, pants, skirts, sweaters, suits, jackets, coats, and blazers. You try to hang all of these items, plus likely store things like purses and shoes on the shelves and hang accessories like scarves.
The problem is, when you hang everything in your closet, it gets jammed together, and your clothes end up wrinkled, pulled, and worn out. Even if you’re blessed with a walk-in closet, you still likely fill it to the brim, so you end up with the same problem.
Folding more items frees up valuable closet space, but you need to fold them the right way. Don’t just cram a bunch of rolled-up things into a drawer. Check out Marie Kondo’s folding guide for how to fold tons of items in a way that they take up as little space as possible. Then, you can utilize a dresser or chest of drawers to keep them.
You can fold jeans, shorts, pants, most shirts and blouses, sweaters (which should be folded anyway to avoid misshaping the shoulders), and skirts. You also can fold underwear and socks in a particular way to take up less space.
2. Store Seasonal Items Elsewhere
You’ve likely heard about swapping out your clothes by season, packing away the rest until the seasons change again. But what if you live somewhere where the weather doesn’t change that dramatically? You might still need tank tops in October or sweaters in summer.
Instead, consider storing seasonal items in a different location instead of your everyday closet and dresser, etc. These are things like heavy winter coats, hats/gloves/scarves, boots, and bathing suits (unless you swim all year long with indoor pools, etc.).
You might utilize a hall closet or clothes storage bags under a bed. Or place them higher up on shelves since you don’t need to access them as frequently. The idea is to keep the majority of your closet and primary clothes storage for your daily items.
3. Organize Shoes Heel to Toe
When storing shoes on a shelf or a shoe rack, store them heel to toe whenever possible. When you do, you’ll notice doing this takes up slightly less space. So you can end up storing a few extra pairs of shoes on a multi-shoe rack.
And while we’re talking about shoes, as pretty as clear shoe boxes are, using them to store every pair of shoes is impractical. They take up a ton of space. Save these for your luxury heels or those unique pairs of fancy shoes. The rest need to go in a shoe bag on a door, shelving, or a shoe rack.
4. Hang Purses
Instead of taking up shelf space with your purses, hang them. You can get products that go on the back of a door that allow you to clip purses to it. You can also use simple shower curtain rings on the bottom of wire shelving and hang bags. (You’ll have extra hanging space when you fold more of your clothing.)
There are also purse hangers that hang from your closet rod. They can hold anywhere from ten purses or more. In other words, you have lots of options besides just lining all your purses up on a shelf.
5. Turn Jewelry Into Art
Don’t take up shelving, drawers, or surface space with your jewelry. Instead, purchase a wall or door-mounted storage system and hang it on display. You can also make your own using painted or stained wood and lots of hooks.
It’s also easier to access your pieces and keeps them in great shape since they don’t get tangled up inside a box. For an earring storage hack, use a long piece of grosgrain ribbon (or several) to hold all of your earrings. You can attach several pieces of ribbon to a hanger or dowel that you can hang on the wall or the back of a door.
6. Maximize Your Vertical Space
Don’t forget about your vertical space when organizing clothes, jewelry, purses, shoes, or anything else. You can install shelves above door frames and store pretty bins or baskets that hold hats and scarves. The back of the doors is another excellent place to snag extra storage.
If your closet only has one shelf, add more as far as you can go to the ceiling. You can always store infrequently used items on the topmost shelves. Consider a taller dresser if you have a room with high ceilings so you can have more drawers.
Another option, if you have the space for it in your room, is to buy a tall freestanding wardrobe or armoire. You can find one with shelves and hanging space to add to your storage availability.
7. Use the Right Storage Items
Step into places like Ikea and The Container Store, and you’ll find tons of exciting and beautiful organizing supplies. There are storage items for everything and anything you can imagine. But don’t start buying up pretty bins and boxes on a whim.
Purchasing storage materials doesn’t make you any more organized than buying a set of weights makes you strong. You have to know what to do with them, and you have to get the right stuff. For example, under-the-bed bins do you no good if you have a platform bed that doesn’t have enough room beneath it.
Assess what you have and your space to decide which storage items are best for you. In some cases, you might be able to utilize some things you already have, which saves you money. But always measure the items and your space and make sure you have a plan for it before bringing it home.
8. Hang Infrequently Used Items on the Back Wall of Your Closet
Here’s one that a lot of people don’t think about. The back wall of your closet is some major wasted space. There are typically a couple of inches to spare between your hanging clothes and the back closet wall.
You can hang hooks on the back wall of your closet to hang various items parallel to the wall. This is an excellent place for winter coats, wraps, team jerseys you only wear during the season, etc. You can also use the wall for accessory scarves, ties, belts, and other items that will lay flat when you hang them.
9. Use Double-Duty Furniture
Give careful consideration to the furniture in your room. Choosing items that will work double time for you is even more critical if your space is limited. For example, choose nightstands that have one or two drawers.
These drawers could be just enough to hold things like socks and underwear. Or, if you want to incorporate a bench or ottoman into the space, find one with storage. You can use them to hold things like purses, extra scarves, flip flops, and anything else you don’t want to take up space in the closet.
10. Don’t Forget Your Closet’s Side Walls
In addition to your closet’s back wall, don’t forget the side walls. Some closest have shelves on the sides, but most are the typical one-shelf, one closet rod setup. Add shelves or hooks to the side walls to give yourself lots of extra space. Side shelves are great for built-in shoe racks, folded sweaters or jeans, hats, or purses.
Wrapping It Up
Of course, it’s also helpful to go through your clothing and accessories and pare down by donating what you no longer need or want. When you have less to store, you have fewer things to find homes for.
But, once you know what you’re keeping, using these ten tips will go a long way toward maximizing your clothes storage. Now your only stressful moments will be figuring out what to wear to that blind date or important interview.
