As time passes, certain activities are demanded of us. The yard has to get mowed. The tax receipts have to get organized by tax day. But then other things have no deadline. There’s no outside pressure to clean out the closet. No one from the government is going to call you about painting the house or getting kitchen dividers so you can find your utensils with ease.

These are the type of tips I want to address in this hub, while sharing some useful advice on how to make it easier to accomplish the task.

Organizing Kitchen Drawers and The Pantry

It takes hardly any time to organize the kitchen pantry and any often accessed kitchen drawers. For the drawers, I suggest getting some dividers to sort out the space in each drawer, creating little pockets of space to help better organize your kitchen items.For the pantry, it’s easy enough to sort things out first by throwing out any super old or expired foods. I suggest you then take all the least often accessed items and place them at either the very bottom of the very top. If you have any heavy food items, such as 20 pound bags of rice, save the bottom area for them to make it easier (and safer for kids) to help out in the kitchen. If you feel so inclined, go to Target or any home store and grab a couple air tight tupperware containers and move in your cereals, grains, flours, and so into them. Label them with a date. If it’s not obvious what it is (such is the case at times with different types of flour, sugar, spices, etc) then be sure to label it with a name too!

Organizing the Garage

Oh boy, this is a biggie right. Or at least, for many people it is. How crazy is your garage right now? Probably not the most organized room in the house, I would dare to venture without even seeing it! The good news is that you can get things into shape in a single afternoon with some extra hands, sweat, and of course, with the help of some organizer or storage tools. Because garage storage systems are big business, it’s easy to find all sorts of useful storage items for the garage. But first, clean it out. Yep, I’m sorry, but it has to be done! Clean out the garage of all trash and items taking up space. Get rid of as much as possible. Then, with the addition of storage bins, sports racks, and if needed, a good set of garage shelves, re-organize your items. Sports gear and children’s toys make an excellent pair for over sized storage bins. If you’ve got bikes, spend a few dollars and get a bike rack to keep it in place.

Also, while you’re at it, sweep the garage floor!

Getting The Attic under Control

I don’t even want to touch this one. But…

Do you have an attic? Awesome. Can you use it for anything other than massly disorganized storage? Well, you can, so I will give it a shot in one sentence on how to do so. I will actually reduce it to words.

LABEL EVERYTHING.

Moving on…

Organizing the Closet

Cheap closet organizers are a man best friend. Or a couples best friend, or a woman’s best friend! The point is that closet organizers make life easier. They’re also not very expensive at all, unless you shoot for a custom install or something. Throw up a few closet organizer shelves, get a shoe rack, get hangers that can hold weight and won’t break – all these things will make a huge difference.

If you still don’t have enough room, consider buying what’s known as a portable closet for extra storage and keeping it in the guest room. If you’d like to get something sweeter, check out a nice wooden wardrobe closet. They’re pricey, but they last forever and of course will give you a second closet to work with.

Also, as mentioned in nearly all these tips, if you go through all your clothes and assorted related items that are in your closet, and get rid of things you don’t wear, need, or use, it will make organizing the rest of your things much, much easier!

John Louis Home JLH-523 Closet Organizer

• The unit fits in closets up to 10 feet in length.
• In total the unit provides a whopping 24 feet of shelving space and up 18 feet of hanging space.
• It was designed with propery air flow and proper ventilation in mind, which is important for keeping clothes fresh in the long term without any mold or that common “old closet smell.”
• All shelves are 12 inches deep. This is considered the standard for closets organizers.
• Assemply is required. This is going to be the biggest hurdle to jump for many people interesting in a nice closet organizer such as this one. The company tries to make light of it, stating that to put it together all that’s needed is “a pencil, level, screwdriver and saw.” Now, the first three are easy enough but a saw? Please keep in mind that you will need a saw to cut this unit as you see fit and then assemble it as you like. For some, this means a huge amount of control over the unit and the ability to customize it for there needs. For others however, this means either skipping out on one where you don’t have to do any cutting or hesitantly proceeding with saw in hand! Reviews from users on this point are mixed.
• On that note, here are the pieces which come on their own, of which will require assembly: Three 12″ x 24″ shelves, Three 12″ x 72″ shelves, Five Wardrobe Bars, 9 Bar Spacers, 4 Angle Brackets. Additionally, this organizer system comes with a few “freebies” of sorts, which includes a stand alone tower and two additional shelves for this piece. This tower can be used alongside the rest of the JL-523 or placed anywhere else where it’s needed. It can also be further customized beyond the two included shelf pieces with more shelving and racks.

For those individuals who are adept at do it yourself projects and are comfortable working with saws and screws, this is a fine closet organizer. If that scares you, it’d probably be better to check out some of our other reviews for less products which require less intense assemply.

Be advised that this closet organizer systems weights approximately 50 pounds. Prices fluctuate depending on where you look, but expect to pay $200-300 for this unit, plus shipping and handling fees. Also note some stores offer home installation, which of course, will come with a price tag of its own!

Note: Amazon.com is currently offering free shipping on the John Loius JL-523 Closet Shelving System!

Many, many closet organizer products are available for just this purpose, and they target just about anything you might have hanging in the closet, or rather, lying on the floor, as the case may be. Some simple solutions to your closet woes are just a few dollars away. Here are some recommendations made by The Closet Organizers Guide for getting things managable:

Buy some additional shelves that you can just hang up. Yes, this means you don’t have to mess around with screws or nails, or god forbid, bust out a saw and have to cut away the shelves to fit. (Sorry John Loius.) Being a capitalist economy that caters to every need, one can find just about every kind of hanging shelf you’d want to put in a closet.

Suggestions include a simple hanging shelf rack, which provides half a dozen or so small shelves or racks for shoes, clothes, and sweaters, nicely folded of course. The more creative types in our audience will realize that, despite products being sold exclusively as a sweater rack or a shoe rack, adventurous organizers may put tshirts, underwear, socks, and even hats into these racks. (Don’t worry, we won’t tell you on!)

Prices for simple hanging shelves are on the very cheap end, such as a $20 unit sold by Whitney Design, modeol 01822-3, for organizing shoes, sweaters, and shirts.

Get a ‘double up’ rack and hang twice as many clothes. Now this option won’t work for everyone – it depends on how high your rack is already and if you have room underneath the area where you hang your clothes. But if you can make it work, check out what’s called a
Double Up Closet Doubler Rod. It attaches to your pre-existing closet bar and wah-lah, you instantly have twice as much space to hang clothes! This is perfect for those with small closets, such as dorm rooms and college apartments. If also fits the college student budget, typically costing under $20. Nice.

Donate your old shirts, sweaters, pants, and shoes you don’t actually wear and only take up precious, precious space. Ah, in a guide to organzing your closet, you probably knew in the back of your mind that we’d suggest you go through and rid  yourself of clothes you don’t wear anymore. After all, the less stuff you have to organize, the easier and better organized the closet will be. Simple math. (Plus you get the karma bonus points of giving clothes to someone who needs them. It’s a win-win situation.)

Seriously though, don’t overlook this suggestion. Many people, and dare we say most people, realize on closer inspection that 50% of the items in the closet haven’t been worn in years. If that’s the case, get rid of it. And while it’s hard to let go, once you have alll that extra space, trust us, you’ll be happy you did! It’s the equivalent to getting a closet that’s twice as big.

. . .

If you take these three tips together, you can literally have a whole new closet and it’ll cost you less than $50, and even much less if you are a bargain hunter on something like Amazon.com.

Rubbermaid 3H88 Closet Organizer

Fast Facts on the Rubbermaid 3H88:

• Easier to Assemble than most higher end products.
• No cutting is required. No saws or fancy equipment is needed.
• Provides up to 10 feet of hangin space and 18 feet of shelving space.
• Available in titanium or a white finish.
• Unit costs less than higher end solid wooded closet shelving / organizers.
• Shipping weight is approximately 55 pounds.

Low Price Alert: Right now, Amazon.com is offering this unit less than $150 and that includes Free Shipping.

Rubbermaid has a good reputation for providing quality closet organizers and closet shelving systems. It’s not without reason, and the Rubbermaid 38HH Delux Custom Closet Kit makes good on this point. Available for under $200 (currently around $150 at Amazon.com – and it even comes with free shipping at this time of this writing!) this closet organizer provides everything you could want in a closet organizer system without the hefty price tag. (For those seeking a higher price tag, there is one thing you could want that’s not here: a nice wooden finish! But you can’t have everything for such a great price…)

Buyers report that it is comparably a breeze to assemble (although it still will take a few hours!) and one important point is that it does not involve any cutting, like some other organizers, such as the very nice John Louis Closet Shelving System we wrote about earlier. We feel that this is an important point for many people interested in getting a nice organizer for their closets who lack – how shall we say – certain mechanical skills? Yes!

You can see from the picture a good idea of what this unit offers, but don’t be fooled by the seemingly small size. Yes, this is a unit that will fit 3-to-6 foot closets  but it provides a heck of a lot of space; notably, you’ll get 10 feet of space to hang suits, dresses, shirts, and so on, and a whopping 18 feet of shelving space for folded clothes and other knicknacks. A particularly elegant use of the shelves is to allow the bottom two shelves to be used as shoe racks, as shown in the photo. This keeps your shoes easily accessible and organized, as well as off the floor of your closet. (How many shoes are somewhere in the void of your closet floor at this moment? Exactly! Wouldn’t it be nice to give a home to all your pairs of Vans Men’s Shoes? )

For the price tag, this unit delivers. Currently in the range of $175-$225, with relatively easy assembly, and again – no cutting involved, with 28 total feet (!) to organize your clothes and shoes, this is a unit you won’t be disappointed with.

First thing first – let’s address the question of wasted space. And what could be the biggest space waster in that closet of yours? It’s the answer not everyone like to hear, but we all know it applies to us, too – I’m talking about all those clothes stuck in the back of the closet that never get worn! Old clothes are the biggest space waster in the closet. The best thing you can to before you buy any extra closet shelving or racks is to go through ALL your clothes and get rid of what you don’t wear any longer. The more adventurous among us can use the following principle: if you’ve worn it in the last year, it stays. If you’ve not worn it in the last year, it goes! And while we’re at it, let’s also address non-closet items being in the closet taking up space. It’s time to take out all the random stuff you’ve shoved back there, such as those cheap barstools you meant to sell on Craiglist, broken corner China cabinets that really is a double space waster since it actually saves space when set up properly, or god forbid, other unmentionables we won’t even get to that really belong in the garage or attic (or the trash!).

With that out of the way – wow, there’s a bit more space in there now, isn’t there? So the question now is what’s let and how to organize it? Assessing your inventory now is meaningful question. The easiest and least expensive way to proceed organizing your closet space would now be to purchase some cheap shelving – for instance, a cloth-based rack that attaches to the closet rod, hanging down, and adds 6-10 little shelf spaces for shoes, sweaters, sock, underwear, and so on. Something like this can usually be purchased for very little cash – in the range of $10-25 dollars. The return on this small investment is that you will actually be able to organize your closet now with all that extra space!

Secondly, another method of making good use of the space is to purchase what’s called a doubling rod. This ingenious little device adds another closet rod to hang clothes on – in fact, it attaches to the first rod, but hangs below your clothes. So essentially you can double the amount of clothes that you’re able to hang in the closet! And once again, the  nice part of this tool is that it won’t cost hundreds of dollars (like  a full scale closet organizer that you put together and install will cost you typically), but rather it costs roughly $15-25.

These three tips taken together will work work wonders for closet organization!

If you have more than one child and are saving clothes from child A to be used by child B, then having a system for organizing these clothes is all the more pertinent. And if there’s more than two kids, then you’ll have to organize things or it will look like a clothing war is going on in the bedroom.

This is where the purchase of a few closet organizer products or even a  kids closet organizer where truly make all the difference!

Buying a few hanging shelves for the closet, along with a few “closet cubes” (nice looking boxes, essentially), and a label (or a good memory) for each section, season, or age for clothing – this is the key!

For example, we suggest the following method to organize your childrens clothing. Take all the clothes of a certain size for a certain age and group them together in one or more congruent shelves. Label the shelves if desired. If there are many clothes and this is still too messy, then further subdivide them into seasons like spring clothes and winter clothes. The important part is to keep each bundle separate from the others and easily identifiable,  otherwise, you’ll just end up back in the same situation probably. Once all the clothes for all ages and seasons are organized this way, you’ll find that re-using the clothes for the next child is a breeze. In fact, as far as closet organization goes, all the work has been done, and you simply find what you need using the same method you’ve been using.

There are also a few ways to keep it lively and perhaps more interesting for your child if he or she likes to pick out their clothing. Closet shelving and closet cubes now are made for all sorts of kids stuff – such as a shelf with pictures of trucks on the side or a Disney princess. These touches can make it more fun for your child to take part in keeping the closet organized!

One last bit of information – don’t forget the shoes! We here at the Closet Organizers Guide know more than few parents who feed a healthy shoe habit for their little girls. Yes, yes, kids shoes are tiny (and cute) but if you have 2 dozen pairs, they have to go somewhere, and if there’s not a shoe rack, then that somewhere will be everywhere. So invest in a small rack or shelf that is just a few inches off the ground (so it’s easily accesible to the child) and get in the habit of taking and returning all the childrens shoes from here!