Organizing your closet

For the last three weekends, I've been meaning to organize my closet.

One: it's an absolute mess.

And two: it's full of summer clothes and I need to pull out my fall/winter wardrobe.

I keep my off-season clothes in the guest-bedroom closet, which I've been pulling from off and on the last couple of weeks. Some days, it's cool enough for a sweater and other days, I could get away with wearing a T-shirt. But it got cold in New Jersey over the weekend and I think it's here to stay. It's mid-October, after all.

So, always wanting to lead by example, I hope this blog makes me get off my butt and switch my closets and start fresh with a new fall/winter organized wardrobe.

If you're stuck in a rut like me, here are some great tips I found for organizing your closet:

Clear it out: Figure out what you're really going to wear this season. My rule is if I didn't wear it last fall/winter, I'm probably not going to wear it this fall/winter, so I set it aside for Goodwill.

If the shoe fits: If you keep your shoe boxes, take a picture of the shoes that are in the box and attach it to the box, so you know what shoes are inside. This is something that I really need to do. I keep my shoe boxes hoping it will help me keep the floor of my closet organized, but the problem arises when I'm looking for a Banana Republic or Nine West shoe. I have too many shoes from Banana Republic and Nine West, so, when I'm searching for a shoe I bought from either of those stores, I have to look in multiple boxes.

No sweat: Sort sweaters by color and don't hang them; you will distort the shape. Right now, my sweaters are in a drawer, but unfortunately, they are tossed in the drawer, not folded and certainly not arranged by color. I normally sort my sweater drawer a couple of times a season to keep them organized.

No hang ups: Buy quality hangers. OK, they don't have to really be quality - I use plastic hangers from Target, not the really nice wooden ones. But plastic is so much better than wire. My husband and I share the chores and one of my chores is doing the laundry. My husband has a closet full of wire hangers. If he has one, he had 100. I refuse to hang his shirts on those hangers. Just because your clothes are returned to you from the cleaners on wire hangers doesn't mean you have to keep them. They are trash!

All in favor, say "eye": Keep the clothes you wear more frequently at eye level. There's nothing worse than looking for your favorite shirt or pair of pants and you can't find it. Those clothes should always be right in front of your face.