1) Out with the old, in with the new. We tend to keep things way too long. We hold onto items that are bulky, out of style, scuffed up, doesn’t fit right, or just things that we don’t necessarily need. Sometimes we figure out while organizing that we don’t like hardly anything in our closets. Imagine if you got rid of everything that wasn’t your very favorite how much space you’d have! Start being picky and get rid of all the excess baggage in your closet.

2) When the closet is cleared out, this is the perfect time to get it really clean. We tend to neglect cleaning the closet floor, baseboards and shelves for long periods of time. This can increase the risk of pests, molds and mildews in our closets. Get in there and clean the floor really well. Wipe down the shelves, hanging bar, and other hardware. You may even decide to give the closet a fresh coat of paint while it’s empty.

3) Now, take inventory of what you have. If you have a lot of t-shirts, you may consider designating a shelf specifically for t-shirts in your closet. If you have a lot of shoes, you may want to invest in some cubby-style shelving to accommodate all of your shoes. If you would like to keep things like socks, underwear, pajamas, and swimwear in your closet, you may want to plan for room on a shelf for baskets, buckets, or bins. The key here is to make sure that you plan the space and have it accommodate your personal belongings. Cookie-cutter organization systems often leave people needing more space in one area and less in others.

4) After you have your personal shelving and hanging bar configuration installed, it is time to get serious about making some storage space. Use vacuum bags designed for storing blankets and out of season clothing. Hang your clothes on hangers that work for your closet. Wooden hangers give the closet a luxurious look and feel. Wood hangers also are functional in helping you solve some of your closet problems. Most wooden clothes hangers are curved to fit suits and coats, helping them to keep their shape. You can invest in cedar clothes hangers to keep your closet smelling fresh. When your closet is designed to meet your needs, you will enjoy having it and keeping it organized.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

Wood is one of the sturdiest building materials on the market. For closets, nothing beats cedar. It is strong, fragrant, and protects your wardrobe from mold, mildew, and pests. Cedar has a beautiful, colorful wood grain that is both unique and stunning. The look of cedar has been adored for generations.

In addition to the many benefits of cedar that you’ll experience long-term, you can also enjoy the fact that cedar doesn’t have to be stained or varnished. Its uniqueness is best enjoyed unfinished. After a few years, your wooden cedar hangers, shelves, and cabinetry can be gently sanded with a fine grit sandpaper to renew its fragrance.

Other types of wood shelving that are popular are maple, oak, and pine. Pine isn’t quite as sturdy as the other types of wood, but is still great for closets. If you use pine, be aware that the wood can easily split when you are nailing or screwing it into place. Drill a small pilot hole in the shelves before you nail or insert a screw to avoid this problem.

You can paint the walls of the closet with a color that compliments the wood you are using before you install. It is easier to do this before you install shelving. You can also sand, stain and varnish wood before you install it.

Once you have your system in place, you can accentuate the wood theme by installing crown moulding in the closet. You can install wood doors, door frames, use a dowel instead of a metal bar, use wood hangers or other high end clothes hangers, and install baseboards around the sides, top and bottom of your system. Wooden pegs instead of metal hooks make for functional hat and robe storage. You can also use a wood clothes hanger designed to hold things like belts and ties.

If you like the idea of a cedar closet, you might love the idea of lining the closet in cedar. You can use cedar planks or panels to finish out the closet. It looks beautiful and smells wonderful. It deodorizes your clothes and shoes so that you never have to worry about that musty closet smell.

Using wood in your closet will make it something you are proud of. It will be beautiful, increase your home’s selling value, and give you a sturdy closet system that can last you forever. Doing the project yourself will give you a feeling of accomplishment. Finishing out the closet with wooden hangers will give it that timeless beauty that you’re looking for.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

There are a few basic guidelines that you should keep in mind as you organize. You should adopt a minimalist attitude, to an extent, and get rid of any excess clothing, shoes, belts, or other items that you don’t regularly use. Most people take comfort in wearing their favorite clothing over and over again. What happens is that you get something new that you love and end up taking one of your old favorites out of the rotation. You may look at it and think that you like it and want to keep it and then never wear it again.

Use this tried and true trick to help you determine what should stay and what should go. Turn all of your hangers around backwards on the bar. Wear your clothes as you normally would for the entire season. Then, when it is time to swap out your winter wardrobe for your summer wardrobe, take note of what you never wore and get rid of it. Do this every time you switch out wardrobes and your closet will constantly stay organized. This process keeps you from hanging on to clothes year after year that you never wear, and also helps you to realize when you’ve replaced an old favorite with a new one.

Keeping the amount of clothing in your closet down to a minimum will help you to free up space that you can use for storage. With just a few tweaks, you can make use of the wasted space that you may not have even realized you had. See if you have room above your hanging clothes for two shelves instead of one. Look at the sides of your closet to see if you may be able to extend those top shelves out to the front of the closet. You may even be able to move the top shelf up and make room for an extra hanging bar, drawers, cabinets or shelves below your clothes.

Limiting what you store can be a lot of work, but minimizing the space that you use for the things that you need to keep is key in organizing your closet. Utilize other space saving accessories such as hooks, over-the-door racks, bins and baskets. You can update your clothes hangers to ones that stay separated on the bar, like wood hangers, and your clothes will stay wrinkle free all season. You can also utilize hangers that save space by allowing you to hang multiple items on one hanger.

There are many tricks to getting your closet organized and keeping it that way, you just have to take the time to figure out what will work best for you.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for clothes hangers. Get all of the closet and clothes hanger accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

First, get everything clean. Sheets, blankets, and other fine linens can get really wrinkled under the weight of each other. Plus, stacking them in the traditional manner helps them to hold in moisture and create that tell-tale musty linen closet odor. The smell actually comes from molds and mildews growing in your sheets and towels. If your closet smells, it may be a good idea to rewash the sheets and towels that are in there before you begin. Make sure that they are completely dry and free of moisture before you put them back in.

To avoid the wrinkled sheet problem, try installing an inexpensive hanging bar in the linen closet. You can use sturdy wooden hangers or specialty hangers with clips to hang your fresh sheets. This keeps them nice and smooth, instead of compressed, musty and wrinkled. It’s a really easy solution to a lot of linen closet problems.

The next thing you can do is use cedar wood hangers in the linen closet. Clothes hangers made of cedar absorb any moisture that may be left in your clean laundry. They also deodorize the area and keep it smelling fresh. They help fabrics and carpet resist mold and mildew growth. The smell of cedar is so nice on your linens and will make you feel like you’re staying in a nice hotel whenever you use a towel or change your sheets.

If you like other scents, you can use sachets or linen sprays. Sachets are just little bags made of breathable fabric. You can fill them with your favorite herbs, dried flowers, potpourri or cedar accessories. You just sprits linen sprays on your fabrics weekly to keep the whole closet smelling nice. Cedar will last a long time but may eventually start to lose its aroma. If that happens with cedar hangers or cedar accessories, just rub them a little with a fine-grit sandpaper and they’ll be as good as new again.

You can also use dryer sheets to freshen your closet. Some people like to put one dryer sheet, or fabric softener sheet, in between each sheet and towel in the linen closet. However, many people with sensitive skin are unable to use fabric softeners. If this is the case for you, simply leave the box of fabric softener sheets in the closet, but not touching any of your linens. This may be a good idea for everyone, since dryer sheets contain a wax that can mark your sheets and other linens.

Using dryer sheets, sachets, cedar accessories and cedar clothes hangers will keep your closet smelling nice. Hanging linens on nice wooden hangers will keep it looking great as well. A good wood hanger will be sturdy enough to support the weight of heavy blankets without bending or breaking. When your linen closet is fresh and organized, you can enjoy it every day.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

First, get some specialty hangers. Little things like belts, hats, and scarves don’t seem to take up much space. However, when you put them all together, they do actually take up room. Even worse, if they’re disorganized, they can make your entire closet look disorderly and cluttered. Specialty hangers give you a specific place to put all of these little things. They also help to save on space, because instead of each of these things taking up shelf, drawer, or basket space, they simply hang on the bar. All of your belts, scarves, and hats can take up as little as three inches of hanging space when you use specialty hangers.

Cascading hangers are also great space savers. You can get special cascading pants hangers and skirt hangers that allow you to hang multiple like items on one hanger. If you don’t like digging underneath the pants to pull out the ones that you want, consider getting one that is hinged at the top. You simply lift up the bottom and all of the pants or skirts will hang freely apart from each other. This little detail helps you to not pull pants and skirts off onto the floor or wrinkle them trying to get them off of the hanger.

Your clothes hangers can have a big impact on your space as well. Flat hangers are great for saving space, but they can be flimsy, causing your clothes to end up crumpled on the floor. When the hooks get all tangled up and the clothes get smashed together, the space that you saved seems to not be worth the effort. This is why we recommend wooden hangers made to save space. You can buy flat wood hangers that keep your clothes very slightly separated. They save space, but are designed not to cross up on the bar and they are definitely sturdier than plastic or wire hangers.

Specialty hangers, cascading hangers, and space saving wooden hangers are available in all sorts of styles and colors that will suit your needs. You’ll be amazed at how much better your closet looks when your clothes hangers all match. A good clothes hanger will be sturdy, beautiful, and free of sharp edges that can snag and rip clothing. Wooden hangers are definitely the hangers of choice when it comes to saving space and organizing your closet.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

1) Figure out what the worst traits are about your closet currently and make a list. Some people have a problem mountain of shoes or dirty laundry that ends up on the floor. Do you have a lot of specialty items, like yarn and knitting supplies? Do you have too many suitcases and backpacks that you’re not willing to part with? Whatever you have a lot of, you need to make special preparations for.

2) Before you decide what you will do, pull everything out of the closet and clean it. People don’t get into their closets and dust very often, so while you have it empty, get it really clean. You may even want to slap on a fresh coat of paint. Light colors will help you find things easier and make the closet seem more spacious.

3) Take a look at that problem pile of stuff. Prioritize space usage based on what was really bugging you about the way your closet was. You could decide that you want to leave room for a large laundry basket in the bottom of the closet. Or, you may want to build a giant wall of cubby holes for all of your hundreds of shoes! You can probably get rid of some things and reduce the amount of space that you’ll need, but make sure that you have room for what you’ve got and what might be coming in. Use the vertical space, all the way to the ceiling if you need to, and use the back of the door if you can.

4) Make a space for things that don’t normally go in the closet that you would like to keep in there. Craft supplies, photos, ski equipment, a giant jar of coins, whatever it may be. If it’s important to you, then make a space for it.

5) Design the rest of your closet space around your special needs. Make it look really nice and neat by using wooden hangers. Wood hangers keep clothes perfectly separated on the bar and will keep clothes from getting wrinkled. Your clothes hangers need to meet your needs as well. If you don’t choose wood hangers, then choose ones that are sturdy enough that your clothes won’t end up on the floor.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

First, consider the feel of your store. The atmosphere is set in many ways, but for boutiques, it’s all in the details. Your lighting alone should showcase certain areas of the store and set the tone and mood. Customers should feel a certain way as soon as they walk in. Using lighting to calm or excite is one way to start out. Many boutiques use drop down decorative spotlights and lamps to keep things highly illuminated without resorting to harsh overhead lights.

Think about what customers will see when they come in, as they walk around, and as they look through your clothing racks. They should initially see varied textures and displays at different heights. Use tables, garment racks, and interesting things to hang from, such as antique armoires or hat racks. You can even hang art or abstract items on hooks from the ceiling to accent different areas of the store.

Make sure that your displays are always kept orderly and neat. In a boutique, there are often a lot of unique items that don’t fit into categories. These can be showcased in a lot of different ways, just make sure that you don’t make any one area cluttered, or people won’t feel like sifting through. Many boutiques effectively maintain an orderly disorder and it adds to the charm of the boutique.

Details come in many forms. Think about what details you want to add from floor to ceiling. The floor may call for interesting rugs. Be careful not to put rugs in heavily trafficked areas where people might trip over the edges. Hopefully customers will be looking at the merchandise and not the floor! Use rugs in small areas where you have seating or larger items that sit on the floor so that they don’t become a liability.

Your garment racks themselves can be interesting. There are many on the market that are designed for boutiques. They have decorative details and designs that entertain as they display. You can also use other things, like dressers and tables to display so that it doesn’t end up looking like a regular retail store. Avoid a lot of circular or really long racks. It doesn’t do much for the eye and will end up being ignored for more interesting displays.

Have your tags and hangers custom designed. Many wooden hangers can be embossed with your logo, a saying, a picture or a brand. Wood hangers also add to the charm and sophistication of the boutique. Plastic hangers may be cheap, but they’ll say something about the quality of your clothes and are much more likely to damage your inventory. Wood hangers exude the sense of quality and strength. They also come in a lot of different styles, like shirt hangers, skirt hangers, and dress hangers. The specialty hanger sizes and styles are well suited to the custom clothing that you carry.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.

1) Any closet organization professional will urge you to get rid of as much junk as possible. People store all kinds of things in their closets that don’t actually belong there. This doesn’t mean that you can’t hide gifts or store luggage there, it just means that you need to pay attention to what goes in. Plan a space for all of those things that are going to need to stay in the closet.

2) Clothes are the easiest thing to get rid of. If you haven’t worn it in a year, get it out of there. Narrow your wardrobe down to what you really need, want, and like to wear. Get rid of clothes that don’t fit just right, are out of style, or that you just never are in the mood to wear. Get rid of old stiff and scuffed up shoes. No matter how much you may like your shoes, or how much money you spent on them, if they hurt your feet or don’t match anything, they have got to go. Offer things to friends or try to sell more valuable items if you can’t bear to give them to charity. Use the money that you make to fix up your closet or to buy clothes and shoes that fit right.

3) Shelves are really necessary in a closet. If you only have the one big top shelf, then you will probably need to add some to the sides of your closet, the bottom of your closet, or simply start from scratch. There are quite a few inexpensive organizational systems that are very accommodating to sweaters, hang-up clothes, linens, belts, shoes and more. If you want to build your own, use these systems as inspiration.

4) Making your closet functional is up to you. Most people agree that the things you use most should be front and center, no higher than your head. Keeping this strategy in mind while you decide what shelves to put in can be very helpful. For example, keep your work clothes front and center on the bar. On a shelf to the side of the bar, keep your socks in a bin and store your work shoes in cubbies just below. Store linens, formal clothes, heavy coats, and luggage around this area.

5) Once you get your closet organized, think about making it look great. Wooden hangers make a closet look high-end, even if you didn’t spend a dime on it. Wood hangers are useful for keeping clothes perfectly spaced on the bar, giving your closet that organized look and feel. Shirt hangers, skirt hangers, pants hangers, and dress hangers will keep all of your clothes wrinkle free, easy to find, and looking great in the closet.

About the Author: Charlie Hafter is on the staff of Closet Hanger Factory, a leading online resource for wooden hangers. Get all of the wood hangers and closet accessories you could need at http://www.closethangerfactory.com, which is recognized worldwide for their excellent quality hangers.