Tag Archives: clothing organization

Sock drawer

How To Organize A Sock Drawer

Sock drawer

If you’re like me then you likely haven’t give much thought to organizing your sock drawer. You know the drawer that I mean. It’s the one that contains your sports socks, dress socks, casual socks, and other assorted patterns, all jumbled together in one big mess. Sometimes it can take a few minutes to find a matching pair of socks in that jumbled mess when you’re in a rush to get to an interview. Often the solution means dumping the entire contents of the drawer onto the floor and then sifting through the rubble to find what you need.

Maybe it’s time to organize these socks so that you can get at them in a fast efficient manner. Organizing a sock drawer need not be a major chore, but doing it can give you a huge leverage of time in the future. So, five minutes of thought now in exchange for never having to do an exhaustive search for a complementary pair again.

What would be the best way to organize the socks? Start by dumping the sock drawer onto your bed to see what you have. If it’s been awhile, chances are there are socks in the pile you didn’t know you even had. Those can then be promptly thrown out. Now find pairs for everything. Any stray sock that doesn’t have a partner can also be thrown out. Be brutal. There’s no room for sentimentality when it comes to organizing socks.

So now you should have a collection of pairs of socks all over your bed. Should you roll the pairs together? Rolling means stretching one of the socks of a pair over another so that you’re left with a small ball that represents one pair. It’s personal preference what you’d like to do. Rolling pairs together will make for better organization, but the process of combining 2 socks together can cause them to stretch and might lessen their life. Most people find it best just to place the socks in drawers the way they are.

Now the fun begins. It’s probably best to put your newly sorted pairs into small piles based on function. At minimum you’ll have a sports pile, a dress socks pile, and a casual socks pile. Try to condense all of your socks into about four or five functions. Having five small piles seems much more manageable than one large pile. This way, when it comes time to find a pair in the future you’ll have to sift through a much smaller pile and that task won’t seem as daunting.

Once you have your four or five small piles it’s time to actually prepare the drawer. Find some unused shoe boxes or small cardboard boxes and fit them snugly inside the drawer. Then place each different pair set into one of the boxes. Your most-used socks can go on the left and those you use the least all the way on the right.

Now if your friend gives you that last-minute call and asks you to play tennis you won’t have to spend a majority of time looking for the right pair of socks.

Underwear drawer

How To Organize An Underwear Drawer

Underwear drawer

It’s time to get dressed. It’s a cold day, you’ve just showered, and the first stop is the underwear drawer. Then it hits you. You see a drawer or drawers full of underwear, sometimes so full the drawer can’t be closed. Different colors and fabrics are sticking out of the drawer in all directions while you stand there, shivering, trying to find something to wear. If this scenario sounds familiar then you need to organize your underwear drawer.

The first step is to dump out the drawer containing your underwear onto a bed. It’ll be quite a pile but don’t worry as there will be a method to attack this madness. Whether you’re a man or woman, think about categories and which piece of fabric fits best into a particular category. Some category ideas might include boxers, briefs, panties and sports bras.

One way to begin organizing is to examine each piece of clothing. Try it on. Does it still fit? Is it something that can be worn in the future? If not throw it out. Whittle down to what you actually use. The next step is to separate garments into two categories, work and non-work. For men these categories might blur and not take much thought but women might have more sub-categories such as work and non work bras, full coverage underwear, boy-cut styles, or thongs depending on the degree of coverage and the look that’s needed. Organizing by color is also another popular way to go.

Have different boxes and containers for different types of underwear. G-strings could be in one container while boxer briefs are in another. You may want to line the containers first with self-adhesive tape. Lining a container protects soft fabrics and increases their longevity. Remove the lids to the containers and place the entire container in the drawer.
Containers come in all types as well. If you’d like to place all undergarments of one type together in one container then that is a fine solution. Also available, however, are drawer separator options that allow you to actually place one piece of underwear in its own cubicle area. Some are spring-loaded which will enable you to conserve more space than ever by helping you minimize the space per garment.

How you place the garments in these containers is up to you. Folding is an option. This can keep your garments in good shape and increase your available space. To save space consider storing underwear one layer deep. This is also helpful in minimizing the time it takes to search for something you want. Bras can be folded one cup into another while certain very sensitive pieces, like delicate lingerie, might need to actually be hung up so details like lace won’t get damaged. If folding or hanging is not for you and too tedious, there’s nothing wrong with simply rolling your underwear into a ball and throwing them into the containers.

There are endless ways to organize an underwear drawer. As personal as underwear is, so are the ways they can be organized. No matter how you do it, just keep in mind that you’ll want easy access to what you’ll need.