So, you’ve purged, cleared out your closet and have edited it down to the clothes that gives you the warm fuzzies, but yet it’s Monday morning and you still don’t know what to wear.
Here’s where pre-planning and closet management can have a huge impact on your morning routine, you need to coordinate outfits and have a system to recall them so you can pick and choose what you need to wear for the day. There are several ways to accomplish this based on your level of OCD, time on hand and preferred technology.
Coordinating Outfits
Let’s start with my favorite method which consists of taking a few minutes during the weekend to look over my calendar to see what I have going on for the upcoming week. I have to go into the office a couple of days and I have a few important meetings sprinkled here and there. Next, I look at the weather forecast to see what the week will be like, mostly sunny with a chance of rain by the end of the week—great, it's going to cool down by Friday!
I then walk over to my closet and pull out a couple of pairs of jeans, two dress pants and a dress. Next I pull four blouses, a light sweater, two blazers, a long cardi, a light trench coat and three pairs of shoes (sandals, stacked heels and booties). This so far has the makings of a capsule wardrobe. If I wanted to go this way, I would just need to make sure that the colors worked with each other and then poof I have two weeks worth of outfits. But, I prefer to plan week by week and I don’t want to get hung up on colors.
With the clothes I’ve pulled, I have made five outfits that I can wear when I have to go into the office and attend meetings (some are casual meet ups at the coffee shop and some are more formal). I love layering with blazers and trench coats because they elevate my outfit on days I’m wearing jeans and they are also good to have in case I have impromptu meetings ;o). Since Friday is going to be on the cool side and I don't have any meetings scheduled, I've decided to wear a casual fit n’ flare, light cream color with small black floral print dress layered with an open knit mohair sweater and tan moto jacket with tan booties—done!
Once I have my outfits for the week (BTW, sometimes I coordinate 6-7 outfits just in case one doesn’t work as well as I thought or if the weather takes a turn, I’m ready) I hang them all together using the hooks on my hangers in a designated place inside my closet. If you don’t have room inside your closet to do what I do, you can install wall mounted rods or an over the door clothing rack or use a separate clothes rack. Maintaining the outfits together keeps me from second guessing my choices as I don’t need to rifle through the rest of my closet looking for my outfit pieces.
This method takes a total of 30 minutes to get organized for the week saving me at least twice as much time as what I use to spend each morning figuring out what I was going to wear.
Other ways to do this is by taking instant pictures of your outfits and stick them on the wall or somewhere visible or of course, using your good ol’ cell phone—just make sure to create a separate folder just for outfits so they are easy to find.
This method is going to save a ton of time and frustration as well as leave you with your energy intact to get out the door.
Closet Inventory
There are other (more intense) systems, which include taking full inventory of all of your closet, including shoes and accessories. It includes taking pictures and logging everything on a spreadsheet to capture every item by category and a short description (color, fit, casual/business, etc.). This method of inventory is a great way to determine what pieces you are missing as you may discover that you mostly have black or lack prints, for example.
When you photograph your items, use apps like PhotoRoom to eliminate backgrounds, then use PicCollage or even MS PowerPoint to coordinate outfits. You can then save each coordinated look in a five-day planner that you can create in either an Excel or Word document.
If you would rather use an app, there are several to choose from in your app store. The one I have tried is Stylebook so let me tell you about it. It has many, many cool features for coordinating outfits, creating planners and lists for packing and shopping--it even keeps stats on what you've worn! All you have to do is upload your closet inventory to start using it.
I loved this app, but I couldn’t stick with it, it was too time consuming to inventory all of my closet and manually remove the background (I think it now does it automatically for you) and I could never keep up because I turn over my closet so frequently. But that’s me, it could work wonders for you and I encourage you to try this or any other system you need to manage your closet.
Zen and the Art of Closet Management
The goal of closet management is to make your mornings efficient and dress with intention so you leave the house feeling good and smart about yourself. If you want (and need) this, select the method that best works for you, just remember to first clear out your closet, coordinate outfits based on your needs for the week (or travel, events, etc.), document these outfits so you can reference them and if you choose to, keep them separated from the rest of your clothes so it is a one step process from shower to getting dressed.
If you would like help with setting up your closet for optimal use, please contact us, our stylist are here to help at info@thecloseteditco.com.
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