Minimalist Monday | Part 1 of My Closet Tour: KonMari Drawers

Dum DUM dum... Here it is: unedited, raw, messy Part 1 of my Closet Tour, featuring my chest of drawers organized according to the KonMari folding method (if you've never heard about it, here's my review of Marie Kondo's book, 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up'). I know you've all been waiting for it! Hmm, or maybe not. Either way, this is the state of my chest of drawers after having decluttered about 40% of my clothes. There's still a lot left, so I can't exactly call it a capsule wardrobe, but it's something - and I also wanted to write this post for myself to look back on as I continue my journey towards a more minimalist closet.

To give you some sort of visual/ spatial reference, the chest of drawers in question is from the Ikea Malm range - I have the chest on the left, and my husband has a second matching one on the right. They're set against the wall in our bedroom, facing the bed. Because they're quite tall, I can keep some decorative and sentimental items on top, as well as a wooden tray with my current perfumes and jewelry for easy access.

Well, the tour is mostly unedited: I didn't tidy up or alter the organization in any way just for the sake of this post, but I did decide to omit my underwear drawer, for two reasons: first, it's my undies we're talking about, second, it's not really organized or folded using the KonMari method. I keep my bras and underthings separate, but that's about it. Don't worry though, you're not missing much from the tour - here's my sock drawer instead! I used to fold my socks in compact balls to keep the pairs together, but Marie advises against that: so I simply folded the pairs in halves or thirds and set them up vertically. I also used an old shoe box to keep my athletic and no-show socks separate. In the back, I keep extra thick and snowboarding socks I only use occasionally, and in the very front, my most used crew socks, organized by color family.

The second drawer down houses my short and long sleeve tops, as well as tank tops. This drawer has seen quite a big transformation compared to what it looked like before I started to declutter. I used to store all my tops folded on top of each other, and I actually had to keep my summer tops separate, because they wouldn't all fit in one drawer; as a consequence, I rarely wore any of my warm weather clothes. After pairing down the tops, everything fits nicely into one drawer, with some room to spare in the back. From left to right, I have short sleeve tops, long sleeve tops, and small sushi rolls of tank tops and camis. I haven't really put any effort into color-coordinating these with the exception of tanks, but I tend to put freshly laundered tops toward the front of the drawer, in an attempt to rotate them with the stuff from the back. It only works half of the time ;)

The third drawer down contains my sweaters and some of my scarves (mostly off-season and rarely reached for scarves). The two sweaters in the middle of the drawer are stacked on top of one another because they are in fact too thick to stand up vertically. I don't reach into this drawer a whole lot right now as the weather continues to warm up, but I find it pretty functional when I do. This drawer used to stuffed to the brim with just knitwear, but after decluttering, I was able to move my scarves into it from a hanging closet organizer, which we actually don't need anymore.

The second last drawer houses my workout clothes & swimwear on the left and sleepwear on the right. If you're interested in capsule closets or challenges like Project 333 at all, you may know that those two types of clothing are considered 'extras', as they're only worn for very specific purposes - so it made sense in my mind to store them together. Again, the vertical organization works so much better than the awkard piles I had in there before.

Lastly, the bottom drawer contains my bottoms (cue Minion laugh). I have long bottoms on the left, leggings & lounge bottoms in the middle, and shorts and warm weather bottoms on the right (along with some belts I currently use). This drawer also used to be full to bursting with jeans and pants, and now I have some space left that I may use for something else, like maybe the rest of my belts, or my tights and stockings that I keep in a separate box in our closet.

And that's it! Overall, the vertical organization works so much better for me than the old piles: I can see everything I have at a glance, which makes dressing in the morning a lot easier and quicker. One thing I was worried about before making the switch was that the drawers would somehow get messy very easily, but I can honestly say that hasn't been the case at all - when I remove quite a few items and a row starts to fall down, I just push everything to one end to keep it together. By decluttering my clothes and then organizing them properly, I've also been able to see what I clearly have enough of that I used to purchase quite frequently (like socks and leggings), and to visualize my ideal wardrobe color palette - can you already guess what it is from looking at the photos? ;)

Let me know if you have any questions about my drawers at all, I'd love to hear them. Part 2, featuring our walk-in closet where I keep clothes that need to be hung, should be coming quite soon - there's still some reorganizing I'd like to do in there when I have a spare moment. I hope you enjoyed this peek at how I store my clothing, and maybe it has inspired you to tweak your organization to suit your needs in the best way possible. Thank you for reading!