4 Barriers to Decluttering Your Closet—and How to Overcome Them
Tired of a messy closet but can’t bring yourself to clean it out? Here are 4 of the most common barriers to decluttering your closet—and ways to overcome them.
1. Fear of being overwhelmed.
So you finally decide to conquer the bedroom closet and get it organized once and for all! But once you get everything out of the closet, you feel overwhelmed by piles of clothing, shoes, and belts, and you just want to collapse on the sofa and zone out in front of the TV.
That’s where pacing yourself comes in handy. Maybe it’s not about removing everything from the closet at once—or even trying to clean the closet in a single afternoon. If it’s taken you months to clutter up your closet, give yourself at least a few days to declutter it.
Start with one section at a time—for example, your shoe collection or weeding out clothes that you haven’t worn in over a year. Celebrate small steps along the way, and give yourself plenty of breaks when you need them.
2. Getting distracted.
Whether it’s pulling out old love letters from the back of your closet or finding a loose button that belongs to one of your shirts (if you could only figure out which one), the more you get distracted, the longer it takes to declutter your closet…and the more likely you will be to quit before the task is done.
To avoid letting yourself get distracted, designate an empty bin for “deal with it later” items, such as items that belong elsewhere in the house or old photos that you need to add to albums. When you come across these items, throw them in the bin and get back to the task at hand.
3. Dealing with someone else’s mess.
If you share a closet, chances are that the person you’re sharing with may not have the same habits as you do. Just having a place for everything doesn’t mean that someone else will put things back where they belong.
If possible, get the other person involved in the decluttering process. Think how they use the closet and organize their stuff to find the best way to rearrange the closet. Maybe it’s installing a few hooks at the front of the closet for a favorite scarf or using clear bins instead of woven baskets to make it easy to see what’s in each bin. Organize their side of the closet in ways that make sense to them—not necessarily the way that you would prefer to have it organized.
4. Forgetting to plan first.
If you’re the type of person who buys on impulse and comes home with an armload of closet storage bins and shelves that don’t fit the size of your closet, it’s time to take a step back and reassess the situation. Before you buy, take the time to measure and plan.
Figure out how much closet space you have to work with and how much space you need for hanging clothes, folded clothing, shoes, and accessories. Then decide which closet storage accessories that you need for all of your stuff.
Custom Closets – Minneapolis
Need a better way to organize your closet? Harkraft offers custom closet design and installation in Minneapolis and the surrounding area. Give us a call at (763) 544-4478 or contact us online to schedule your free custom closet design consultation!