As you may have already guessed, I have an inordinate amount of clothes. Like, a lot. I mean as in, I have a closet full, plus a 5-drawer chest, plus five of eight under-bed drawers full. Of clothes.

Mostly, my clothes are fairly inexpensive (hello, Old Navy! Though Torrid and I are becoming quite close recently. Quite, quite close.) and fall into a few main categories: yoga pants, skirts, tank tops, jeans, cardigans and dresses. Throw in some skirts (short and long), various hoodies and jackets, some evening wear and some going out tops, and you get a closet that really does get away from me sometimes.

Like seriously.

This last weekend I had a laundry spree where I washed all the clothes from my recent work trips. Why so long? Naturally, I didn’t need to wash clothes because I bought a whole bunch of new ones I lived in till I just couldn’t stand it.

I do have some methods to my madness, however. A year or so ago, I started trying to get a handle on closet organization. While I’m still a ways away from what I would consider my dream closet, I feel like given the sheer volume of shoes and clothes that I have, it could be a lot, lot worse.

When I have enormous amounts of laundry like this, I like to first separate everything out into piles, then fold and put away each pile.

Here we have stuff to hang up, cardigans, shirts, a ridiculous pile of tank tops, and bottoms.

I have a special method of hanging my tank tops, courtesy of pinterest:

Yep, cheap-o shower curtain rings and wooden hangers. Separating light colors and dark colors (or attempting to) is about as far as I go toward color matching. I’m thinking of switching out these “C” shaped ones with ones that fully close, though – these ones will only hold 2 or maybe 3 tank tops before the straps start slipping out of the opening. Also, I’m trying to find a sturdy tension rod that I can put in the side of my closet to hang them from – all the rings tend to slide to one end of the hanger or the other when I’m shuffling through my closet.

I also have a specific way of folding shirts and bottoms, and of storing them in my drawers. Shirts folded in half, and pants/bottoms folded in thirds, then everything is “filed” vertically in the drawer so I can see everything and don’t forget about it.

Before you ask, I have no organization for my unmentionables. I don’t even try to match up socks. I just put them all in a pile and then into a drawer they go.

Same with sheets. I found a Pinterest post that supposedly had like 20 ways to fold sheets neatly but I have yet to master (or even try) any of them. So they just get sort of mashed up into something vaguely resembling a big pile of sheet, and stuffed into a cabinet I have in my room for this very purpose.

I also have (surprisingly) crappy storage for my shoes. You’d think that with the number of shoes I have, and how dear to my heart they are, that I’d give them a better home than this. These are re-purposed pre-iTunes CD and DVD holders. Remember those?

I try to hang pretty much everything on dark wooden hangers. I feel like even if my closet is disorganized, the sameness of the hangers makes it look a little bit better. You can get like 45 of them for $50 on Amazon. Best of all, they arrive in the biggest box ever, which you can use to put all the stuff you don’t wear any more when you go through to put the new hangers in your closet! Win!

Sometime this year I plan to put in one of those nifty closet shelving systems. I have yet to find one that isn’t those wire racks but also doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. I’ll keep you posted.

So now you learned several new things about your 2N today…I geek out over showing you my clothes, I can’t fold sheets for shit, and I love polka dots. Like, a lot.

PS: Is it bad that I wrote this blog post specifically to give me motivation to fold, hang, and put away that entire monstrous pile of laundry??