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Monday, May 25, 2015

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!

19 comments:

  1. I love this! I have been trying to really get started on minimizing my clothes and makeup collections, and while I've made some progress it's been a challenge to really get ruthless. I am definitely going to try this method of storing clothing though - it looks clean and tidy, and so functional!

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  2. Interesting folding method. I also used to stack the laundry onto each other and I easily get confused which ones I have already used and which not. Do you think that Konmari saves or needs more space than the usual folding method?
    What do you do when your drawer is not full enough? Will all rolls fall down?!

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    1. Hi Lila! I think the KonMari method saves a bit of space actually - when I started refolding my drawer, I could see how many more tops would fit in one vertical row versus a horizontal stack - that's probably because you're using the entire length of the drawer this way. I mentioned in the post that when I remove quite a few items and the rows start to look a bit messy, I just push everything to one end to keep them compressed; but actually, I don't use that many clothes at any given time, so I guess my drawers remain rather full most of the time :D

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    2. Thanks for your reply, Monika!
      That sounds nice! I think I should give it a try.

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  3. Oh, I never thought of storing clothes vertically. Looks like it's so much easier to see everything I have, so I won't forget about them! I might need to try this to see how it works for me.

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    1. Try it with one drawer to start with, Lily, and see how it goes for you! I only did my tops at first and it was so nice that I quickly followed with the other drawers :)

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  4. What a lovely chest of drawers!! I love how organized everything are, doesn't it feel good when you open them up everyday? Yes, I 100% agree with you, maintaining an already-organized and pared-down drawers are much, much more easier than I thought, too. It was actually a breeze to keep things that way since everything is out in the open and not so much stuffs are around.

    I like the Malm drawers, too bad it is too big for our closet -- it looks so roomy. I can't fold my workout/hiking/sport clothing vertical on the Antonius shelving (the one that I use) since the jackets, etc. are so bulky, so I had to fold them old-style. I also like how you organized your scarves -- mine are so bulky, I still need to find a way rather than putting them all in a tub (which prevents them from getting eaten by insects, fortunately).

    Lovely post, Monika, I'd love to see the hanging closet part!

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    1. Thank you Claire! Haha, definitely one of the bigger benefits of decluttering is that maintaining order is just so much easier, right? It's also so quick to grab stuff that was previously at the bottom of the pile, or a different location in my closet altogether! The Malm is really nice, but one con is that the drawers don't open all the way, so the stuff that's way in the back is a bit hard to get to. I have my super bulky hiking stuff hanging in the closet too, it wouldn't fit in the Malm really. For the rest of my scarves, I have one of these scarf hangers with holes to loop the scarves through - it hangs on the back of my closet door, so it's easy to see what you need at a glance. The walk-in closet is coming, I promise! It's a lot more messy than the drawers though :D

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  5. Tiny OCD orgasm here! I love how neatly organized everything is! :-)

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  6. God damn this is so inspiring! I need you to come and organise my life Monika! Do you feel like a plane trip down to Australia?

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  7. This is great! As soon as I do a closet purge I'm going to try this out. :)

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  8. Can you please let me know how you folded your shirts? Have tried doing thirds but they're so bulky, not flat like yours. Love this post, thank you! x

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    1. Hi there! I fold my t-shirts and long-sleeve tops starting like you would normally fold them for putting in a pile (fold the sleeves and about 1/4th of the width back), but then instead of folding in half, I sort of fold both ends (the bottom and the top around the collar) in at the same time, and then in half again where the ends meet. Hope that makes sense? If not, I've seen some tutorials on YouTube how to fold using the KonMari method!

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  9. This has been so helpful! I just finished reading the section on folding clothes and I was having a hard time visualizing the end result so super helpful!

    Tell me, did you read the whole book and then start the method. I'm taking forever to read it (work is getting in the way), but as I go through I'm tempted to just start chucking things, which I know she doesn't recommend. I guess I'm just excited and inspired to start the process. I've been purging and doing all the other methods she doenst recommend so I dont think it will take all that long to reach this level of magic - lol!

    Can't wait to see Part 2.

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  10. yea i love storing my clothes this way! it makes it so much easier to find what i'm looking for and it packs way more stuff into each drawer!

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  11. Ok, I haven't gotten to this point in the book yet!! I love that you can see EVERYTHING! Admittedly I stopped reading because her philosophies (at least up to what I read) mirrored my own and I thought eh, what's the point...but I had no idea she actually goes through stuff like this. Need to start reading again ASAP :-) xo

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  12. i really like this way, but i'm afraid it will fit much less? I have this malm dresser in a darker wood, and also a slightly shorter malm dresser... and every drawer is full or nearly so... so yeah. i feel like making the switch will be really daunting, and what if it doesn't all fit???

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    1. Hi Joyce! You know, I actually think you can fit in more this way, because all of your drawer space is being used. When I folded all my regular tops vertically, it turned out I had enough space to add my summer tops in the same drawer, which used to be stored elsewhere for lack of space. Also, switching it up doesn't actually take a very long time - just start with one drawer and see how it goes, it shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes!

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  13. Wow! Your ideas are so brilliant and I want to make that way of organizing drawers! Thanks for sharing with us!

    Olyve Guevara

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