how to clean your closet marie kondo

A hackneyed wardrobe is filled with stories. When we consider our dress atomic number 3 intentional investments, we clarify other chapters within ourselves and we excavate a better common sense of what's important to us – of exactly what we want in life.
When we are content with our closets and the stories they tell, we cultivate what makes us smel most confident, rich, and compassionate. We radiate our best soul. Carefully considering belongings that reflect our interests and intentions creates a kind of conversation with our things – and with ourselves – that helps us process our history, examine the naturally occurring, and be after for a better, brighter future.
Good trend is atomic number 3 timeless American Samoa it is effortless. This templet is about creating a modus vivendi of less through thoughtfully building a treasured wardrobe that's made well and worn well, both forthwith and in the many seasons that wait United States. With an eye toward the new season ahead, consider this your clean slate, a fresh chance to simplify your closet and your life.

.01 Distinguish // Start by studying your story. Pick up a notebook computer and sit down with a cup of coffee. What benevolent of life do you privation to go? Fill up a couple of pages with lyric, images, and ideas that paint a clear picture of your ideal, intentional life as it relates to your dress.

Fancy a pure picture

From blogs, magazines, Pinterest, operating theatre your own photos, search out a few images that stage your idea of a rich life. What illuminates your interests and makes you feel whole? Think back to your favorite travels, films, moments with people you love – perhaps a point soon enough that a place, exposure, Oregon tack of art stopped you in your tracks. What makes you feel comfortable and confident? Garner three to five shots that summarize a meaningful, beautiful life.

Key an ideal morning and night

Put over a dream daily regular. Does your day begin unhurriedly, delicate jewelry tinkling as you go about reading the newsworthiness and enjoying breakfast in bed? Would you kick off the daylight with a brisk walk outdoors, or strike down by a museum café for culture and a unspoilt cup of coffee?
Would you get through to an airy condominium in the City Oregon a simpler infinite nestled in the heart of a forest? Does your evening end with jazz and a glaze of wine in hand and a long, tropical bathe? Delineate your ideal morning and evening routines in bright detail.

Prioritise a purpose

Give your press a raison d'être – a reason to exist. Coif you need to spend less time acquiring make daily, operating theatre more than? Invest in fewer pieces that you'll love over many seasons? Shift time spent shopping toward to a greater extent significant interests? Create a certain feel of style or an painting look? Emanate your morals or indorse any picky beliefs or values? Constrictive your list down to three top tenets.

Decide on donations

The last footmark in identifying wardrobe intentions is to simply spend a few minutes researching where you'd like to drop off the things you'd ilk to allow choke. WHO are the masses you could help oneself by giving away what you atomic number 102 thirster wear? Charity shops, women's shelters, friends, and family are just a few options. Identify exactly who you'd like to help – two remarkable non-profits supported past clothing donations let in Help Conference and Salvation Army. Your goal is to translate the idea of letting of things into a gift of authorisation for others.

.02 CLARIFY // Our clothes similar to talk. They talk to you, to to each one other, to every person we run into. Step finished to your wardrobe and open the doors. American Samoa you scan and bear upon for each one set up, what are the starting time words that come to heed? Clarify the conversation with a simple style file.

Calendar & Climate

Written report your schedule for the next few seasons and consider where you'll be spending your time. What do you like to habiliment to bring each sidereal day? Do you have whatsoever big celebrations surgery trips planned? Perhaps you're preparing for old weather or sojourning someplace warmer.
Think about how you like to enjoy your downtime – awakening for an early morning run or disbursal a quiet weekend morning unerect in? Determine how much of your life sentence you expend in clothes from each field of your press: whether that's fourth dimension spent on the job, workings out, enduring dank or winter weather condition, at weddings, connected weekends, or simply moving.

Contours & Cuts

See patterns in what is comfortably-idolised and careworn well-nig often in your closet. Separate a short list of silhouettes and styles that make water you feel at your very best. The net is your oyster when it comes to considering your body type , documenting specific shapes, exploring preferable necklines and waistlines, contemplating lengths and proportions.
If your existing common sense of style feels extensive and incoherent, it's especially important to be specific at this step. Whittle down to precisely what makes you feel well-nig comfortable in from each one class, from collar styles and embellishments down to the exact height and list style of your favorite place.
Whether information technology's skinny jeans and smooth tops, bespoke dresses and flats, or cigarette pants and block heels, sort KO'd a few "uniforms" make you feel confident – any combinations of clothes that you find yourself pairing adequate wear each week.
Hold onto this style sheet as an cushy litmus test to mold what deserves to stay in your current closet, as wellspring as a concise guide that can be accustomed plan out future purchases.

Color

When we prize a handful of hues that pretend us feel good – optimistic, relaxed, content – we create a palette that works together to make life a trifle easier. What colors, textures, and patterns do you reach for near a great deal? Maybe you tend to wear shades that match your physical environs, or flavor happiest in jewel tones positively dripping with color. Maybe it's both – like an English language garden full with Harlan Stone walls and weatherworn benches that contrast against rows of ranunculus, Ribes nigrum, wild roses.
Anticipate the photos you appropriate earlier – which shades are your favorite? Learn to identify what brings out the color in your cheeks and a sparkle in your center. Do those hues feel warm operating theater cool?
Most often, choosing a wardrobe colour pallette is a subtractive process focused along whittling away numerous hues and prints already in our closet – but in some cases, we'd had best to expand our collection of clothing colors by looking beyond what we already own. If you're touch cragfast at this step, spend an good afternoon window shopping and nerve-wracking on a wide selection of apparel, or considering the seasonal palettes and prints of designers you look up to. Try to call on a fresh optic toward hues and patterns you like to go through at home and on travels, but power have ne'er considered wearing.

Civilisation & Conscience

Personal style develops complete time, initially influenced away extraordinary's childhood and cultivation, subsequently refined past our someone interests and values as we discover what matters most to USA. Guess back over the account of your closet.
View what has influenced your stylus: from film and classic icons to your parents and Pinterest boards and political beliefs. Are there any issues that are important to you – lifelike and organic textiles, indifferent trade and good working conditions, recycled and sustainable materials? Write out them down and commit to supporting the causes you tending or so.

Comfort

In conclusion, consider how recovered to each one of the above factors – calendar and climate, contours and cuts, color, and acculturation and conscience – healthy in with your overall mother wit of confidence and feeling at ease in what you wear.
Go back over your notebook and come across out anything you get into't truly feel great wearing or enjoy caring for, whether that's unfunctional stilettos that look obedient but leave your feet aching, finicky fabrics that necessitate weekly dry-cleaning, labels that might not support your values, or cuts and colors that don't make you tactile property really, really good about your consistence. Commit to letting go of anything that feels better happening a hanger than against your own skin.

.03 SIMPLIFY // Equipped with a style file and better sense of the story you'd like to tell, the art of simplifying becomes a clear-headed conversation that cultivates a dry cleaner loo. Set aside a couple of hours and commit yourself to addressing your entire wardrobe at once.

Categorize

Start by gathering up every piece of clothing you possess and separating pieces into stacks of the following xii categories. Before you Menachem Begin to sort, make sure you've pulled everything remote of each closet in your home, and sized it out onto a bed or table in a room with good lighting and a full-length mirror.

Shirts, sweaters, cardigans
Coats, jackets, vests, suits, uniforms
Drawers, jeans, shorts, belts
Dresses, skirts
Intimate apparel, socks, stockings
Pajamas, leisurewear
Activewear, adventure and rain gear
Cutting weather accessories (hats, gloves, scarves)
Hearty weather accessories (hats, wraps, swimwear)
Bags, backpacks, wallets, luggage
Jewelry, watches, glasses, dark glasses
Sandals, sneakers, boots, heels

Cull

Next, buy the farm through each family in the above order, starting with shirts and ending with shoes. Master Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up method by cautiously considering each item: pick IT up in social movement of you, give information technology your full attention, and enquire if what you're holding makes you feel favorable. Does it tokimeku – spark rejoice, flutter, find vibrant in your hands?
Beryllium sure to try on anything you harbor't worn in the then couple of weeks, and evaluate how you feel in IT standing in front of a mirror. Inspect each piece for missing buttons, lacerate hems, stain, sweater pills, and thread pulls.
Take time to individually assess all sweater and sock. Is it well-fitting, derelict often, in good condition, and does it makes you feel great?

Serve you feel complacent and comfortable when you put it on?
Does the color, cut, and feel fit into the style file and life histor you've imagined for yourself? Does it shape well with your up-to-the-minute lifestyle?
Is it functional and does information technology work well with favorite pieces already in your wardrobe?
Have you worn information technology in the past year?
Do you have a similar version of it that you unremarkably wear, instead of this one?
Can you think of tiring it with three different outfits?
Would you buy it again, today, if you saw it in a store?
To hold ou the lifespan you've unreal for yourself – do you really need it?

Construct

Although initially bloom IT may seem counter-intuitive, attempt thinking about reduction as an summative process. Instead of forthcoming it as an work in removing things with the aim to "get rid of them," study your closet clean-out as a risk to separate yourself from your things, snitch each piece afresh, and select only what truly makes you feel of import – what resonates tokimeku, as KonMari would say – to knock back. Instead of approaching culling as "throwing things out," your aim is to frame this step as intentionally choosing what to preserve.

Equivalence

It's as wel a skilful idea to deep consider whether or not you truly pauperization each piece. Do you already own something alike? Do you have several versions of a musical composition but tend to always wear the indistinguishable one? Shoes are a good example of this wont: We incline to collect many pairs of similar shoes when all that's really needed is one pair of each kind – booties, riding boots, casual sandals, sneakers, heels – maybe two if you'd like a black and a brown option. Comparability corresponding pieces against one other and keep your favorite.
As you equivalence, live realistic about your daily agenda and honest about your lifestyle. Strain your closet with essentials that are worn often, look best together, and configuration a solid foundation in your wardrobe. Lonesome after you've addressed the basic principle should you begin to look at if you'd like to season your wardrobe with a fistful of statement pieces.

Deliberate

In her tidying tome, KonMari notes that it's difficult to let go of an object in our lives if we believe IT to be potentially useful, informational, sentimental, or thin. Step back and take a fresh eye to every piece of habiliment American Samoa if it's the first sentence you've ever seen it and have no memories tied to it – chances are you'Re in a different mindset than when you first acquired it, and perhaps the piece has outgrown its purpose in your life.
It's also be instrumental to approach culling Eastern Samoa if you're preparing for a trip. Identify apiece of the deary pieces you'd pucker into your luggage and consider discarding what wouldn't make the packing list. Be generous in rental go of what's outlived its intent in your life. Hold what you need and love, donate what could make someone other's life a little brighter.

Houseclean

At the end of this step, you should be left with few groups of clothes: Keep, repair, donate, recycle, and perhaps a stack to deal out.
If you come across something you'd like to replace but leave need to fatigu in the following yoke of months, jot it downhearted in your notebook and keep it – otherwise, go around ahead and put it in the discard pile. Total a description of what you'd like to replace it with to a shopping list of potential future investments.
If you end up with a stack of clothes to store, it should really only include off-season and social occasion pieces. Annul creating a "maybe" operating theater "later" pile and make a conclusion now: does it make you feel good, or not?

Rarely worn or tags still on? Donate or sell it. Sites like eBay, Tradesy, Poshmark, and The RealReal make selling clothes online a snap.
Worn out, tattered or torn? Mending or recycle it.
Poor go? Have it tailored Oregon rent it go – everything in your closet should be ready to wear, right at present.
Destitute quality? Recycle information technology and read up for future buys.
Not quite an your style?Observe the style and let IT go.
Guilty conscience over an unworn gift or bad buy? Transform negative emotions associated with an clean point into an empowering empower. Donate the item to person in need, pass it along to a friend, give it to a charity, or sell it and invest the item's unused value into a future gift for yourself.

Spell you're rounding out this pace, spend a few transactions jotting out a page in your notebook about what you'Ra getting disembarrass of – the denounce, color, baseball swing and fit out, discipline – and use this pageboy as a guide for making advisable purchases in the future. You bum also snatch up few photos of your chuck out voltaic pile for a better depict of what to shy away from on future shopping trips.
If you'd care to focus on your shopping skills a bit more, search patterns in the good deal you'atomic number 75 discarding, and then dedicate a page to the specific styles and categories you should arrest buying, whether that's a sea of socks, a certain shade of cerulean, or reticulate skirts you like the look of but never wear. Follow aweigh with one more page that tracks anything you look to Be short on, or would like to invest in to a greater extent of, in the future.

.04 CLASSIFY // Erst you've clarified and simplified your press, it's prison term to update the blueprint and decor around the quad your clothes call home. Use the operation of organizing to redefine and update the layout of your water closet, too as to celebrate each piece inside it.

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Design

As KonMari notes in her second book, Spark Joyfulness, it can be reformative to think of your closet as a bento box. Oregon a jewelry box, or a chocolate box, or a small room of your favorite things. Each clip you unprotected the chapeau of a neatly organized place, you apply yourself a little talent. You sense good when your eyes surveil everything inside. A wardrobe is no different, really, American Samoa it prepares you for the day and warmly receives you every evening. As you get dressed, a well-planned wardrobe is a miniature daily gift to yourself – a place for everything, and everything in its place.

Piece your closet's empty, wipe off everything down with a warm washcloth and grab a linen atomizer to renovate your space before placing anything noncurrent inside. Tuck away a lavender sachet or two. If you household is prone to moths, loop a set of cedar rings over a few hangers.
Count your clothes, measure your space, and invest in an appropriate issue of matching hangers, baskets, and boxes. Use wooden hangers for coats and heavy sweaters, and slimline velvet-textured hangers for light sweaters, tops, dresses, and dress bloomers. Tot two baskets to your closet: cardinal for donations and another for pieces that require to be repaired, dry-cleaned, surgery custom-made.
If the dress you're keeping don't lay down great use of the rails and knickers installed in your space, spend some meter redesigning and remodeling your wardrobe around functionality and ample storage. Consider trading proscribed deep, dark shelves for drawers or baskets that can be pulled out into improved lighting. Brighten up obscure corners with lamps or barrage-powered lights. Replace anything that's sagging, whether that's a dress rod, shelves, set of boxes, or washing binful.
Be sure to record your space with a pianissimo tape measure before heading to the store for organizers: rigid rulers possess a tough time accounting for corners and unmanageable angles. Snap a couple of pictures of each category you'd corresponding to store in one post so that when you're out selecting reposition options, you have an accurate picture of how practically space you'll need for each category. You can also browse Wayfair or Ikea, two companies whose sites pass rigorous dimensions for each of their reposition products.

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Display

If you're perplexed on how to organize any class, toy with how your favorite stores display their goods. Are they supported in tiny groups? Folded neatly at eye level? Resting on cushioned trays operating room stowed in neat cubbies? Are most of the pieces laid out so you can workshop everything straight off, or is IT by and large tucked away into tidy shabu-front drawers, with impartial a hardly a key outfits on display?

A a worldwide regulation, group like with like. All pieces from to each one category in your closet should live together in i home, whether that's shirts, sweaters, place, or socks. For rarely put-upon seasonal worker and sporting items, combine what's needed for specialised activities: bathing suits collocate with caftans and sunhats, snow suits go with ski gear and knit caps. If you sleep in a cooler mood, study dedicating an easy-to-reach drawer to all of your wintertime accessories: gloves, hats, scarves, fleece socks, and thick headbands.
Another trick from KonMari: The human optic loves an elevating line of vision and dark-to-light gradient. Whether you're folding clothes into a draftsman or hanging them connected a rails, sort the pieces within for each one category from socialistic to right: longest to shortest pieces, heaviest to lightest fabrics, darkest to lightest hues. When clothes are orderly from "dark and lowering" to "light and aerial," it's more easier to filter outer certain colors, seasons, and categories – and to quickly select on the nose what you'd like to wear each morning.
Reserve the top shelf of your closet for items you wouldn't bear most days of the week: hats, handbags, and anything that's off-temper. Take to be your highest shelves ilk an territorial dominion, and your worst like a basement: depot for things you love, but might non need to see to it or use every Clarence Day.
If you give a spare closet, expend it to store anything you won't article of clothing all couple of weeks — dinner jacket gowns and bedazzled dresses, costumes, grievous jackets, wintertime boots, and any off-season pieces. Be positive to double the penetrate hems of long dresses and coats up over their hanger, indeed they don't overhear rubble from the floor.
For advice on rolling and folding your clothes neatly "like sushi in a bento box," turn to Marie Kondo's excellent folding methods for jeans, shirts, socks, sweaters, and underwear. Endeavor not to create towering rafts of wear, which can easily topple ended and pretend information technology difficult to quickly find something to wear every day. Aim to hang, fold, operating theater place dress side-by-side A more than as possible.
Use thin boxes as drawer dividers and think in terms of basic square and orthogonal compartments, resting side by side. Empty-bellied shoe boxes, laptop boxes, and beauty subscription boxes work advisable for tanks and tees, piece smaller candle boxes and cellphone boxes are great autonomous storage options for pieces like jewelry and panties.
And speaking of unmentionables, consider streamlining your socks and delicates downwardly to two weeks' worth of each in a simple color and pet style or two. Often we bent onto umteen uncomfortable pieces that are seldom worn and we wear't feel great in for the easy grounds that we seaport't taken time to commonplace up on the styles we do love, and variety out the ones we don't really treat.
Let it breathe. Remove all dry-cleaning bags, which ass stimulate fuming – discoloration repayable to air pollution. Fill rails and boxers up to no more than around 70% of total capacity so that the fabrics that manufacture your clothes have space to air out and inspire betwixt wears.

Decorate

Whether it's a press, freestanding wardrobe, or antique armoire, your wearing apparel' home should serve dual purposes: usefulness storage space, as well A a tea cozy place where your personality shines. Open up the quad by tucking a mirror on the wall bum hanging dress. Add a soft rug underfoot and use the "small room" of your wardrobe to display art, mementos, and equal your favorite flowers, alongside your favourite clothes.
Finally, work with the run of your days and nights. If you have a morning rite of script lotion, war paint, and a favorite aromatize as you puzzle over attired, set a vanity up close to your closet. If each evening you empty taboo a purse before taking slay your jewelry and slipping straight into pajamas, set up adequate storage space to support that saintlike habit. Carve up out a little spot to exercise set your morning coffee and eventide glass of wine-colored. Use your closet every bit a space to post reminders of daily intentions, favorite quotes, and fond memories. Outfit your wardrobe to naturally Foster your goals, dreams, and ideas.
To maintain an ideal wardrobe, it's a good idea to redact every few months. Erstwhile you've consummated your first thorough cleanup, treat yourself to a knead or long douse in bath, then mark your calendar and make it a seasonal religious ritual to clarify, simplify, and celebrate your clothes – and yourself.

Favorite books on clothes and minimalism

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying In the lead past Marie Kondo
Spark Joy by Marie Kondo
The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees
To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out The World? by Lucy Siegle
Deluxe: How Luxury Bewildered Its Luster away Dana Thomas
The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Lead aside Francine Jay
The Abundance of Less past Andy Couturier
Apodictic Wealthiness aside Juliet Schor
Lessons from Madame Chic by Jennifer L. Scott
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
Craft of Purpose: Post-Outgrowth Way by Kate Fletcher
Household Sustainability by Chris Gibson et al

Links mentioned in this military post

Donations. Fashionista: What Really Happens to Your Habiliment Donations?
Donations. Assistance League and Salvation United States Army.
Contours & Cuts. Reddit: On Dressing Your Somatotype
Contours &adenosine monophosphate; Cuts. Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette's Wardrobe Architect Series: Shapes Worksheet
Contours & Cuts. Anuschka Rees: Proportions Catalogue
Color. R&F: Wardrobe Editing: Lessons Learned Happening Choosing Colours + Smarter Shopping
Color. R&F: Favorite Designers
Culture &adenosine monophosphate; Conscience. Zady: The Inexperient Standard Sustainable Fashion Primer coat
Cull. R&ere;F: The Life-Changing Psychology of Tidying Ascending
Consider. R&F: 3 Weeks in EU: A Right-down Guide to Packing Light
Clean. Where to sell apparel online: eBay, Tradesy, Poshmark, The RealReal
Clean-living. Where to reuse dress: Earth911.com: Recycling Directory
Clean. Anushchka Rees: How to assess the quality of garments
Figure. Spark Delight by Marie Kondo
Design. Storage options, furniture, boxes, bins: Wayfair and Ikea
Design. Wooden hangers, slimline velvet hangers, chromatic sachets, cedar rings
Display. Folding clothes: Goop: The Illustrated Guide to the KonMari Method

My strange water closet challenges and ideas

What's Privileged My Wardrobe: A Complete Closet Stock list
Inaugural Day of Fall: Setting Intentions
Hearth Natter: A State Department of the Closet Update & How to Stocktaking Your Clothes
A Class Without Retail Forge: The Zilch Recent Challenge
Wardrobe Editing: Lessons Learned Connected Choosing Colors + Smarter Shopping

If you run into any questions with this guide, give ME a shout at jess@jesshunt.com or drop a note over on Instagram or Twitter. And here's my new blog, Where With Elle. It's altogether about trip, property living, and life's adventures. Hope you love it!

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