Teacher Style: An Organized Closet

One of the toughest parts of getting dressed for work last year was staring into my closet and feeling overwhelmed by my options. I had my closet organized by tops, tank tops, skirts, pants, dresses. Sweaters and layering pieces were kept in another closet. Thinking about pairing a top with a sweater and a skirt or pants should not be hard, but between getting myself, my son and my teaching supplies ready for the day, it wasn’t happening. I would grab a pair of jeans and a plain colored shirt every time. Sometimes I would go really fancy and wear a hooded sweatshirt. Woot!
Now that I’ve sorted through my closet and put together professional outfits that I can wear next year, I realized I need to start hanging the outfits together. It is not realistic to think I will remember which top goes with which pants. While putting the outfits together, I hung them up together on one hanger, like so:
Now my closet is organized into top sets that can be worn with (nice) jeans, skirt outfits, pant outfits and dresses. I have a few camis in black and white that I keep separate so they can be put with any outfit.
For even easier searching, I grabbed several packs of baseball card sleeves and printed out the pictures I had taken of the outfits. I put them in the sleeves by type of outfit (top sets, skirts, pants, dresses) and put them in a binder. Each week I’ll pick out 5 outfits to wear based on events and weather.
Once I’ve picked out my outfits for the upcoming week, I’ll put them in a closet organizer, ready to grab and wear each morning! (I do this with my son’s outfits as well-makes for a really fast getting-ready routine in the morning.)
You can put accessories and shoes in these slots as well-pick out scarves, tights, shoes-even necklaces! One less thing to think about when getting yourself out the door in the morning.
Underneath my hanging outfits, I have my shoes on a shoe rack:
And all my t-shirts, plain long-sleeve shirts, jeans, misc. shorts and hooded sweatshirts are on a cube shelf next to my shoe rack:
This system of organization has made my life SO much easier! I can reach in and grab a complete outfit (like when I was running late putting together my son’s birthday party and just needed an outfit fast), or grab a pair of jeans and a t-shirt if I’m just lounging around the house.
What do you do to make your morning routine easier? How do you organize your closet? Share your tips in the comments!
-Kat
Thanks for inspiring me! School doesn’t start here until after Labor Day so I still have a little time to try and get my closet organized before we go back…
What a great idea! Your pictures were extremely helpful too.
I like the idea of taking pictures of your outfits and putting them into
baseball card sleeves and then into a binder. Brilliant! Thanks for the great ideas!