Closet Organizing and Spring Cleaning
The weather can throw a curve ball in any well-laid out plan for sprucing up your closet for spring-cleaning. Just when you are ready to pack away your favorite jeans and cozy wool sweater, the temperature drops and the cold comes back leaving you wishing you hadn’t packed away your best knit dress.
As we approach May, it’s safe to say summer is here and the temperatures are only increasing. This is the best time to start spring-cleaning and organizing your closet. There never seems to be enough space in the closet to pack away all of the winter wear to keep the closets looking thinned out and organized.
Here’re some tricks to organizing the tasks associated with spring cleaning and consolidating.
Here’s hoping you find these tips useful. Feel free to tweak them along the way to fit your needs.
- Purchase storage containers. Check out The Container Store, where you can find stylish, trendy organizing solutions, but at a substantial cost. The same concept can be achieved by buying bins at Target or Wal-Mart. Depending on how much winter items you need to pack, start off with four bins and go from there.
- Remove all winter clothing that you don’t plan to wear for the next six months and divide them into three piles; the dry cleaning pile, the wash pile, and the donation pile. Drop off the dry cleaning at Prestige Cleaners while you are starting your first load of clothes at home. Or, to make it even easier, drop off your winter laundry to Prestige too. The great thing about dry cleaning is that when you pick up your clothes, they’re clean and ready to store. (Note: At Prestige, we recommend storing clothing in a breathable cloth bag.) Not to mention, our seamstresses can also tend to any needed repairs during the cleaning process, including making minor repairs, like replacing buttons, for free. For your laundered items, all you need to do is request Prestige fold them. We’ll make sure they’re cleaned and folded, ready for you to store in a bin. Don’t forget to label the bins. For the donation pile, there are a number of Scottsdale charities that welcome your unwanted or ill-fitting clothing. Consider:
The Scottsdale/Paradise Valley Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale Thrift Shop–– https://www.bgcs.org/donate/thrift-stop/
- Now that your closet is thinned out, it will need a good deep cleaning. Grab a stool or even a ladder and start at the top and work your way down. Dust your items starting on the highest shelf, wiping off the dust on your shoes, boots, hats, handbags, etc. This would be an ideal time to consider keeping your shoes in shoeboxes to protect them from dust and keep them looking brand new. Next wipe down each shelf and side of the shelves and drawers.
- After everything has been dusted, focus on the floors and baseboards. Dust loves to collect behind clothing and along baseboards, especially in hard to reach corners. Use a broom to break up the dust, then with a wood polish cleaner wipe down the baseboards. The wood polish or furniture polish helps to repel dust in between cleanings. Vacuum the inside of the closet and mop if you have wood or tile.
- Organize the remaining clothing by color, length, and style, and make room for the dry cleaned clothes in the back of the closet.
- Last but not least, install a closet odor eliminator that neutralizes odors from mold, mildew, tobacco, perspiration, and shoes. Try the airBoss Charcoal Closet Deodorizer, I learned about it when we had to test my Ottawa home for asbestos, they’re available at The Container Store: https://www.containerstore.com/s/closet/clothing-shoe-care/airboss-charcoal-deodorizer/12d?productId=10031935
Plan in advance, have supplies on hand, and label well. By dry cleaning and washing in advance, it’s one last step you have to do come fall.
