10 Minute Closet Makeover

Looking for an easy 10 minute project to take your closet organization to the next level?  Enter the closet rings!  This post contains affiliate links.

This post is dedicated to my dad — pretty much the most super patient guy ever … I think I saw him get mad only a handful of times growing up.  One of those times happened to be when he was looking for some jelly in the fridge and he just could not find it.  He had moved everything to the side and around and could not find it.  The man just wanted to spread something on his toast. It set him off, he rustled up the label maker and went to town and labeled Every. Single. Spot. in that fridge. And this wasn’t one of those fancy electronic label makers either. This was the kind where you turned the wheel and hand punched each letter. He was committed to this labeling system.

At the time I thought that was so crazy, like a fridge isn’t that big of a search area, c’mon!  But as our household has grown and we have more stuff to manage, I’ve totally felt the rage he felt on the day.  To me, any time over 5 seconds spent looking for something is just wasted time. So my husband jokes that I will label anything, and I will!   Because labels are the only thing that work in my house to make sure everything is where you think it should be. 

What has really took my organization level up and my search time down were closet labels!

You can find the closet rings I used here.  I’d seen them before in newborn nursery organization posts for when you’re working with a lot of different sizes at the same time in one space (I wouldn’t know about this, for my oldest son we just had a clothes swamp where I literally would just reach in a pile of clothes and whatever I pulled out was what he wore.  Operational excellence personified right there, huh?), but closet labels are amazing for adult and kid closets too. We don’t even have that big of closets — again, this is not a Bermuda Triangle-sized search area — but I have absolutely searched and searched for one cardigan I was after, or forgot that the boys had a few plaid dress shirts already because they had gotten pushed to the back of the closet.  

Really just figure out the organization system that works for you.  Like maybe for someone else it would seem crazy to have a dedicated section for cardigans, separate from sweaters, but not for me, a dedicated cardigan hoarder :). 

For my closet I use: shirts/blouses, dresses/skirts, jackets/blazers, casual shirts, sweaters and cardigans.

For the kids closets I use: dress pants, dress shirts, sweaters, t-shirts and sweatshirts.

This project took me about 10 minutes per closet — the bulk of that time was just figuring out what categories made the most sense.  This lets me easily see what I have in each category and greatly reduces the search area when I’m looking for a specific piece. And once the work is done, it’s done.  As long as you hang it back up in it’s area, everything stays in place!

What about you?  Any closet hacks that have really simplified your life?  I’d love to hear them in the comments!