Organizing and Decluttering My Dresser
As mentioned in my decluttering as self care post I love to be organized but hate taking the time to make it happen. Even though it's always worth it the time commitment stops me. Just like another good for you habit, exercise, I just need to start. Once I get over that initial threshold, ranging from easy to impossible depending on the day, I feel better. Last week, I finally reached the threshold when I decided my dresser needs to resemble something other than a swirling vortex of doom every time a drawer is opened. Organizing and decluttering my dresser has streamlined my morning and evening routines. Here is what I learned from the two day undertaking.
You can fit a lot in a dresser.
I use mine for underwear, socks, workout clothes, lounge and sleepwear and random items that aren't easy to hang up. My previous organization system worked most of the time but if I tried to find something specific in a short amount of time the end result was usually me giving up or reducing the contents to a vortex of colors. I started with emptying out all the drawers to make sense of the madness. From the piles on the floor I could tell lots of forgotten items were being shoved into empty spots just to get them out of sight. I gave my drawers new categories like the workout drawer for my tanks and leggings I wear solely to work out in and socks. A little embarrassing it took this long to figure out but now I know.
Your folding system matters.
Just because you know what color your favorite tee is doesn't mean you will find it. I have my favorite tees in heavy rotation for various reasons. I love them the most, playing favorites, and know they will fit or look good. Did you know most shirts look the same if you can only see the back of them? Even though I folded my tees methodically, I couldn't distinguish between my white Jimi Hendrix tee from my white Valentine's Day is a Floral Conspiracy tee, a high school relic. I altered my process. Instead of folding shirts in half with the filling, the front side, concealed I folded them so the front is exposed. This worked out well for fancy underwear also.
Allocate more room for the most or bulkiest items.
I have a ton of socks. Most are for the fall and winter so they take up the most room. When I separated out my bulky, cold weather socks from the rest, my sock collection was minimized and organized almost instantly. I also have a overflowing supply of underwear and bras. Enough so I could, theoretically, not do laundry for months. They come in two types. The workhorses and the fancy pants. Most of the nicer underwear isn't worn on the daily. I used to wad it up where the sun don't shine, sorry not sorry, and shove it in the back of the drawers. When I needed to find one I would pull them all out, haphazard wads of lace and frills, and sort through them to find the desired pair. Now I have a dedicated underwear drawer which is my version of those chaotic Victoria Secret drawers but mine is organized and you can't buy them, sorry.
Don't be afraid to discard items.
My strict criteria for tee shirts that end up in the dresser is I love them but can't wear daily or I don't care much. Basically, a few of my drawers turned into tee shirt purgatory. I would look through my tees searching for one of the gems and only find the ones I didn't care about. I've done the trick, not sure who came up with it originally, where you take out clothing items you aren't super psyched about but feel like you can't get rid of and put them away where you don't see them. Then you revisit them after a certain amount of time, usually a couple of months. Depending on how you feel after seeing them again, desperately relieved your old friend didn't leave you or forgot you even had it, should indicate whether you keep them or not.
It's kind of a no brainer that organizing and decluttering makes your routines a breeze at least compared to the dreaded before. Now the only cause for delays in the morning come from me standing in front of my closet waiting for an outfit to jump out and grab my attention.
