4 Tips to Organise Your Wardrobe

For some people, the wardrobe is a perfectly organised custom-made wardrobe systems where everything seems to fall perfectly into place, where everything is a piece of cake to locate instantly. For the rest of us, it’s a struggle, and understandably so.  With the busyness of life, we don’t have the time to worry about the wardrobe when it is so easy to just close the door and forget about whatever goes on inside there. Fortunately, maintaining an organised wardrobe can be easier than it sounds if you adhere to these four simple pieces of good advice for your soon-to-be organised wardrobe.

Sort, sort, and sort. The first step to an organised wardrobe is to organise everything into separate categories: athletic wear, work clothes, casual clothes, formal wear, and so on. List out how you want to sort everything and then further separate the different kinds of garments. Pants in one drawer, skirts in another, dresses, t-shirts, blouses, underwear, etc. Consider keeping your preferred clothing items displayed in plain sight and an easy-to-reach place, whereas the less-used items can be stored below, and least-used items up high where you do not need to reach them often.

Think seasonal. Because you do not wear the same clothing in winter as in summer, your wardrobe should also change accordingly.  Shuffling your clothes around in your wardrobe from season to season is the best way to keep your wardrobe organised and tidy. During the hot summer months, you can pack all of your sweaters and winter woolies away until the next cold spell comes around again. And if you’re short on closet space, make even more room in your closet by storing these out-of-season clothes in boxes up high or under the bed.

Use hooks and hangers. Every closet door is an excellent opportunity for storage space. You can build rows of small shelves inside the door of a closet, or you can easily hang a row of hooks on the inside of a closet door and hang handbags, belts, and even jewelry items such as necklaces there. Install individual hooks, low and high for an efficient and personalized layout that fits your items.

Take advantage of clothing organisers. Storage boxes, shoe boxes, organisers for hanging clothes, garment boxes with separate compartments for socks and underwear. These are relatively inexpensive tools that are available at most retail stores. It is one of the easiest ways to organise your closet space. The key is to take advantage of vertical space and stack them up the smart way.

Your wardrobe does not need to be a scary place. By adhering to these tips above, you can ensure a more efficient and more varied clothes selection process.  We all wish we had more time in the mornings. So take one weekend to go through your clothes, sort them out into different categories, separate the seasonal items and put them in storage boxes, and use some of the easy organising tools mentioned above to help you make more room and declutter your wardrobe in no time.

Essential Contacts Before You Move

Moving house means a lot of things for you to do. There is a lot of planning involved, from clearing your clutter, to renting a self storage facility in Melbourne, and to engaging professional movers. You may be too involved in doing the major items that you tend to forget some intangible ones that are important, too, to ensure a seamless move. There is one item that you should not forget to put on your moving checklist and this involves changing addresses as well as organising services for your new home. This is very important so that you are ensured that your utility services are uninterrupted, and you do not miss important correspondences or mails.

Below is a list of service providers that you will need to notify of your change of address. It may not be comprehensive but this is a good start.

• Government - you will need to change your details with the Australian Tax Office, Medicare, Centrelink (if you are receiving benefits), transport authorities and the electoral commission.
• Service Providers - make sure your new address is on your banking, insurance, telephone and other regular bills. Do this even if you receive electronic statements because some documents, such as credit cards, still need to be mailed. You also don't want your important bank documents to be accidentally opened by the new occupants of your old home. This will pose a risk to your and your identity.
• Employment - this is very important, especially for emergency contact purposes. You will need to update your address with your employer. If you run your own business, make sure you update your address with the Australian Business Registry.
• Education Providers - if you have children, they may be moving schools but make sure to update your contact information if you are studying any correspondence courses, for example. Just like in the employment section, this is important for emergency contact purposes
• Close family members or relatives - this is just nice to let your family members and some close relatives (or even friends) to let them know of your whereabouts. In case there are important family decisions that needs your involvement, they can easily locate or contact you. Also, it is good to receive thoughtful mails to remember special occasions like birthday cards, etc

Thus, make it a habit to include changing addresses part of your moving checklist. This way, you are ensured that you won't have uninterrupted utility services and receive important correspondences.

Downsizing from the Family Home

As a household owner, you go through a cycle of home ownership. You initially start with rental as a student and even as you move on to owning your first home as a young professional. You may start as owning a studio type apartment or a one bedroom apartment, with just enough storage space for your simple needs. As you move along in your career and personal life, your home ownership needs become more sophisticated - you cohabitate with someone, sharing the living space with another person and, thus, saving some costs in the long-run. This cohabitation may result to starting a young family, investing in a bigger living space, with ample storage of personal belongings for at least three people. As the children mature, they may require more space as they would need a study room and a family room.

When the children reach adulthood, they leave for school and even venture out on their own. This leaves you with a huge space that only gets filled during holidays. That is the time that you and your partner are looking into downsizing your space for a smaller one, just having a provision for one guest room when the kids are home. Apart from that, you begin to look at reducing the space you have around you. This nesting period, then, kicks in.

With the increasing costs of real estate, more and more mature householders are looking at downsizing their home as a way to save money to fund their retirement. It is not only savings that they get from a smaller home, but also when it comes to mobility, accessibility and convenience of taking care of a smaller home. Although, the advantage for matured household owners is greater than the disadvantage it brings, there are some issues that, if not properly handled, could be costly for the homeowner. Moving into a smaller house could raise a  potential problem of what to do with all of the furniture and family memorabilia that has built up around the home over the years.

Kerri Rodley of Domestic Downsizing, a Queensland-based removalist service, advises mature householders who are planning to downsize to get their kids to clear out their own personal heirlooms and clutter. This will save the time and headache for the parents to coordinate of what to keep and what to dispose.

It is true that in most of the time, some parents are very sentimental when it comes to their kids items, but it is also a good idea to keep only a few of these. If there are items that they couldn't keep with lack of storage space, but are too valuable to throw, they could ask each child if they are willing to keep these to show to their children. While parents will want to keep some photos, they may not want every school yearbook and their children's old toys; thus, it is a good idea to go through these items and ask if the kids would want to keep these at their end. It is a reality that many retirees will be moving to a home about half the size of their current one.

Like what Rodley suggested, mature householders should pass on their heirlooms to children or grandchildren and put other items into storage, rather than clutter up their new home. This will help the matured homeowner to save on costs during the move, avoiding any costs of self storage for these, and only requiring a smaller new home. It is also important to remember that the downsizing process begins well before the removalists come and organisation is the key to a successful move. Children should be very much involved in this downswing process in order to avoid the risk of throwing away through oversight what is deemed valuable by the family.

Paint Your House Before Moving In

You may be keen to move straight into your new home, but it’s a good idea to get painting done before the rooms fill up with furniture and other personal bits and pieces, not afterwards when they will just be in the way and could even get splashed with paint!

To save time on painting major walls and woodwork and other interior design, consider putting some of your household items in temporary self storage. Having a house free from belongings helps:

• Avoid damaging furniture - if you are moving around a lot painting and renovating can damage furniture. Even just bumping it with ladders and other objects can cause marks and scratches.
• Cut painting costs - an empty home is much easier for contractors (or yourself) to paint. This will save you either a lot of money or a lot of time if you are doing it yourself.
• Give fresh ideas - if you are yet to buy all your furniture, adding the main house colours to the walls will help you see what items will fit.

A storage facility makes a lot of sense for homeowners in the process of moving or carrying out some serious renovations and redecorating work, as it offers a safe and secure place to keep valuable and personal items out of harm’s way. Storage is a very affordable option for most people and facilities are very modern these days. Most up-to-date storage services will actually provide portable storage units that are delivered to your location, so all you have to do on the day is pack up your things and load them into the unit. The service then comes and picks up the loaded module!

Now you can move into your new property that is clear of furniture, personal possessions, and moving boxes, and start to paint each room. The process will be much faster as there is plenty of space to move around and as long as you put your mind to it the job will be completed in next to no time. If you decide to employ professionals to do the work then even better as they have the experience and the equipment to complete the tasks quickly and efficiently.  

If you have to move your furniture and other belongings to your home and don’t want to use a storage facility for whatever reason then always make sure to keep the rooms as clear as possible before painting, and cover them with large old dust sheets for extra protection.

Once the house is all clean and freshly painted then you have a blank canvas that makes it much easier to see where items of furniture fit in and what other necessary items are still needed.