Life is increasingly hectic in this buzzing world, so why make your day any more complicated than it has to be? Organize your Closet to shave minutes off of your morning preparation and learn how to minimize your dressing routine overall. Here are some tips for quickly stepping out in style:

1. Organize your closet according to color, going from lightest to darkest. Start with tank tops/camisoles, vests, short-sleeved shirts, long-sleeved shirts, sweaters, dresses, and then 2 piece sets. Always hang sets together unless you never wear the pieces together in the same outfit. Pants and skirts should be folded and placed on a closet shelf or in a basket or storage bin. Ultra-dressy pants and skirts (especially anything delicate, like hand-stitched sequins) should be hanged up.
2. Store clothes you are not wearing that season so they don’t take up hanging space. This is especially important if you have a small closet and/or a larger wardrobe. Place the clothes at the back of your closet in sealed boxes with the necessary preservatives (like mothballs) to prevent animals or insects from eating the fabric. Obviously only pack the clothes that you won’t be wearing at all until the weather changes. If you live in a place with sporadic weather patterns, you might want to hang up a short-sleeved shirt, sweater, coat, and/or raincoat regardless of what season it is.
3. Put shoes in shoe bags or shoe racks. If you have a smaller collection of shoes, just place them in a row on the floor. Organize them according to function and then color. For instance, your sneakers should all be next to each other and your high-heels should be clustered together. That way you can snatch up the shoes you need for your occasion in a flash. Arrange the colors from lightest to darkest. Keep shoe glue, polish, soles, corn/blister pads, and extra shoelaces nearby.
4. Clean out your closet to keep your wardrobe fresh. Sell or donate anything you haven’t worn in two years. Goodwill, Salvation Army, and church-run thrift stores are the standard choices, but you can also try selling clothes on amazon.com, ebay.com, etsy.com, and Craig’s List (these are especially good resources if you do not have the financial or logistic means to transport all of your clothes and shoes to a thrift shop.)
5. Whenever possible, hang up your outfit for the next day. Until you become very confident in your ability to quickly create outfits, give yourself adequate time to put your ensembles together. Avoid hanging up outfits for too many days in advance; sometimes the best outfits are thrown together spontaneously.
6. Choose your outfit the previous night so you don’t feel rushed in the morning. Consider colors, texture, and weather. When thinking about weather, ask yourself if you will spend most of the day in or outside. Are the temperatures indoors and outdoors dramatically different from one another? How will you transition from one to another?
7. In a real hurry, you can resort to classic color pairs. Here are a few color combinations that are always chic: black and red; black and white; burgundy and gold/darker shades of brown; chocolate and turquoise; lavender and light gray; navy and white; pale blue and khaki; pale blue and medium gray; tan and camel.

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