I love love love to be organized. I actually get excited about it! Strange…maybe…but for now, let’s let my obsession be a benefit for those who are equally obsessed or even just slightly interested. Recently, I came across a clothes organization system/process that changed my life. Seriously, the way I have been storing clothes in my dresser for MY ENTIRE LIFE has been wrong!!! I love organization and being able to find things. I’m not always good at it, but when I find a hack that works, I’ve got to share it!!! Have you heard of Vertical Filing or of the KonMari Method?
KonMari Method of Filing Clothes
In recent years, Marie Kondo’s bestselling book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” has made vertical filing more well know. If you do a search on folding clothes vertically you’ll find a variety of articles and videos on the subject. From my review, all seem to be a subtle twist on the same thing. But the KonMari Method seems to be the most well know.
Vertical Folding Described
So, what is vertical folding? Think about a file cabinet that has manila folders. Instead of being placed one on top of the other, the folders are arranged from front to back. One can easily scan the tabs to see everything that’s in the cabinet. Well, it’s the same approach with clothes. If you’re like me and have always stacked your clothes from top to bottom, you may have encountered the same challenges I faced.
The Problem With Traditional Storage
Typically, I end up wearing (or having my kids wear) the same few t-shirts right on the top and I forget what’s on the bottom. When I go looking for one specific shirt, it totally disorganizes the drawer and I have one hot mess on my hands! To make matters worse, this sort of thing typically happens when I’m short on time so the mess stays and eventually I have to set aside a chunk of time to reorganize.
Vertical Clothes Organization Benefits
I sincerely fell in love with this approach and don’t ever see myself going back to my old ways! Not only was it an easy change to make, but also the benefits were huge!
- You can see everything in the drawer
- Nothing get’s lost in the shuffle
- It’s easy to find what you’re looking for
- It’s easy to maintain
- You can fit more in the drawer
- In the case of my kid’s clothes, most of their clothes are in drawers and it’s much easier to match pants with tops by being able to see everything at once
Folding steps
Not Much Time?
When I came across vertical folding, I decided to test it out in only one drawer to see if it really worked, and I was sold! As a busy mama, I rarely have time to tackle a huge project, so I took it one drawer at a time. Each drawer took me about 15 minutes. On some days, I only had time to tackle one drawer and other days I could tackle 2-3. This made it manageable for me and even better, I felt such a sense of accomplishment with each drawer that was conquered.
Bottom line, Vertical Filing of your clothes is a simple yet highly effective change. It helps you to view a broader selection of clothing at once, give you access to all of your folded items vs. just a few, and enables you to more easily match tops and bottoms. I’m curious, have you tried this method of clothes organization? Are you willing to give it a try? I hope it helps simplify things in your world…I know it has in my families!
Ok I LOVE THIS POST! This is like an “ahhh” moment for me because God my drawers are always full and i “lose” things in them lol…never knew about vertical organizing!! I will bookmark this to refer back to it when I reorganize all my drawers! Thank you for sharing this!
Glad you found it helpful!!!
I’ve done this with my own clothes and it has been AMAZING! I haven’t tackled my kids drawers yet, mostly because they put away thier own laundrdy (and they are 2 &3) so I don’t think it would stay folded. Something for the future I definately want to try though!
Way to go getting them to put away their own laundry! Mine oldest is 3 and we haven’t done much in the way of chores…but it’s coming very soon!
Will try your method.. thanks for sharing these tips 😊
My drawers currently look like your before picture. I never thought of storing clothes vertically to organize them better and save space. Thanks for this awesome idea!
Omg! This was beyond helpful, when I’m too busy and just can’t be bothered, I end up throwing everything in the drawer and then have to go through a whole bunch of clothes to find what I want. This will definitely help and being organized is always good :).
My daughter showed me how to do this some time ago and I love this system! It’s so much easier to store things and to find them.
What a great idea! I never have thought to do this but it makes so much more sense! Why did I ever do it any other way?!
I know, right?!?
I love this idea! My daughters clothes are a total mess!
I’m going to do this!! My shirts drawer is overflowing!
This is genius!! I have never heard of vertical folding but I’ve got to start doing it now! Thanks for sharing!
I need to do this with my new baby’s clothes! What a great idea!
Wow! look so organized 😉
The White Ocean
I love organization tips and this is so cool! I’m currently hanging up my clothes and it surprisingly takes up A LOT of room.
Whaaaa!? Oh I SOOOO need to try this, especially with the boys clothes! I hate folding and putting away laundry though.
I have been doing this for a few years and it has made life so much easier.
❥ tanvii.com
This is such a great idea! Will be trying it on my daughter’s shirt drawer ASAP as she has so many shirts to wade through & ends up wearing only the few items that sit near the top of the drawer!!
Yes I try to do this too! I end up having to keep re-doing it though because my toddlers then come around and rummage through the drawers… so I do it more with my own drawers than with their clothing, because they like picking out their own clothes now so any creative folding I do with their draws lasts for approximately 49 seconds.
This looks awesome! I should do this for my little kids clothes! Our 1&2 yr olds need some organization in their dressers. It’s always so hard to find what I’m looking for.
This is absolutely brilliant! I’ve never seen that way of folding clothes before and I definitely have to try it myself. Would be perfect for my daughter’s messy drawers 😉
These are such great organizational ideas! <3
This was exactly what I needed to read right now. This is a struggle for me. Thanks!
This is a great space saver! We do something similar with my sons clothes which are actually on a hanging shelf in the closet. Everything is so much easier to see!
This is exactly what I needed to finally organize my dresser drawers that I had been talking about for almost a decade. Found the right dividers and in less than a week I had the dresser drawers totally organized and have been able to keep things organized. When I open a drawer I can go directly to what I need. Thanks so much, now my next “de-clutter and organizing” will be a small walk-in closet. I’ve been down-sizing clothing wise but just haven’t got to where I want to be. Again many thanks, these postings have really given me the energy to get more organized.
Hi Melissa:
So after I had read your blog I converted my drawers to access my tops all vertically and it truly is fabulous to see everything in one shot and makes it easier to purge when the need arises as you don’t have to pull everything out of the drawers. What I’m really excited about though is the hanging vertical shelves I saw a photo of earlier in your blog somewhere because they had jeans in them and although I’ve seen them advertised for bulky sweaters, purses etc. for some reason I’d never thought of using them for pants which take up so much space horizontally in a closet. So looking forward to trying this. Thanks for all your hard work and sharing this with us!