Let’s Talk Closets: The Questions That Change Everything

I have not been sharing as much organizing podcast content lately as I have shifted my company structure to more productivity, coaching and teaching. But, during some seasons, I just have to talk about organizing!

I mean, I am a coach but still a very proud certified professional organizer!  I started my coaching journey when I realized that deeper and richer conversations with my clients  - more coaching in nature, while we were organizing - yielded better and longer lasting results for my clients. Because when we dig a little deeper, we can create personalized and sustainable systems.

Inspired by client experiences and also the uptick in new client requests lately for organizing - it’s Spring, after all - let’s ask some deep questions about your clothes and closets!  Because these questions are definitely on people’s minds!

And a reminder here - I am a certified professional organizer and a productivity coach, NOT a fashion consultant.  I know my role, I will NOT be asking fashion questions!

Does this sound familiar? 

I worked with a client recently. She is super organized in her personal and professional life, what she lacks is time and opportunity to take care of personal stuff like her closet - and so there we were!

She is super busy, and knows for herself that if she doesn’t make an appointment with herself and with me to get this project done, it won’t get done. This is how accountability supports us!

She also mentioned that having a person, and hopefully a supportive person, with her as she works through her clothes and closet helps her to stick with the process.  Body doubling!

And, because she is brilliant, she also knows that struggling with her closet EVERY DAY as she gets dressed to work from home or to go to conferences or to dinner with her husband or attend her child’s sporting event is DRAGGING HER DOWN, and spending time getting her closet and clothes back in working order is the best investment she can make with a few hours of her day!

Let’s get to those deeper questions!  I will break these into Process Questions and Decision Making questions

Process:

How do you get dressed?  And / or, Where do you get dressed?

I know, that may sound a little too simplistic. But answering the question helps us to understand where our everyday clothes are and what the stumbling blocks might be as we organize. And these questions help us to start creating the solutions that will help us the most.

For some of us, we get dressed in our bedroom or closet, our clothes are in front of us, etc.

For others, they may sheepishly admit that they go to the laundry room and get dressed from the baskets of clean laundry piled there.

No judgment, friends.  But, we can see that the answers to these questions start to highlight the sticking points and what we need to work on.

The obvious follow up is, How/ where do you WANT to get dressed every day?

As in, “ right now, I grab clothes from the clean laundry basket but I would like to get to a point where everyone in the house gets dressed in their own rooms and the laundry room is clearer.”  Yes, now we have more to work with as we make decisions and work towards solutions!

And also, how do you find or decide on what you’re wearing today?

If I was asking myself that question, I would answer “every day for me is a little different.  This morning, for example, I didn’t need to leave the house before noon and it’s also quite warm.  So I chose my summer uniform of khaki shorts and a v neck t-shirt.  Color wasn’t terribly important for me as I made my decisions.  I am a category person.”

For my recent closet client, she has a work from home “uniform”, but also often needs to dress more professionally for client meetings. So organizing her closet into specific areas like a department store, with “work separates” in one area, “athleisure” in another, “coats and outerwear” in a third, made sense to her and worked with how she thinks about getting dressed for her day.

I worked with another client years ago that chooses her clothes daily  based on color. So instead of pants in one area, tshirts in another, sweaters in another, etc., she grouped all of her clothes based on color instead of categories.

Here’s the thing - all of these are valid ways of organizing our clothes and closets, so long as they work for the person who is getting dressed.  And that’s why we ask the questions!

On to Decision Making:

A useful question as we start to make decisions on our clothes is:  Will you ever?

Will you ever wear these clothes, this item, etc.

We look forward, friends.  Sometimes we run across items in our closet and they make us ask other questions:  Why did I even buy that item? What was I thinking? Who bought me that, don’t they know my style better?

I know, these may be pertinent questions, but they are not questions I will ask you in your closet.

A better question, perhaps, for decision making, is “If I was in a store right now, would I buy this item again for tomorrow?” 

The point:

Let’s get over keeping aspirational clothes, at least not keeping on the rod in front of the actual clothes you need to wear this week.  Having that dress that we want to wear if we just lose 10 more pounds or just work out a little more - well.  Keep it if you want, after all, don’t let me tell you what to do.  But, a better solution might be to add healthy habits to the schedule, and a date in the calendar for a month from now to try on the dress again, and then move it aside.  We do NOT need to see that every day and have to push it aside when we just want to get dressed.

On the other hand, we also should not be keeping the slumpy clothes front and center, either, as having those in front of us every day can make us slide the other direction.

Let’s plan our closet for today and this week, friends. Be nice to you.

More of a statement, as we make decisions: Let di-use inform you.

I don’t often quote Marie Kondo’s book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but there are some useful nuggets in there. When she talks about books and specifically unread books, she suggests letting their unread status tell us something.  If we have a backlog of books unread, let’s ask: is it that we need to change our consumption - don’t buy the books if we aren’t going to read them; is it that we need to make more time in our schedule for reading books, or we haven’t gotten to them yet?  OR  do we just not like those books that we own?

All of those questions are questions for our clothes, as well.  If we haven’t worn an item, do we have too many items? have we just not had an opportunity to wear it?  Or do we really not like the way it looks, feels, etc.?

What do we want our clothes to say about us?

My husband and I chatted about this recently - we both tend to resist the idea that we need our clothes to express our specific personalities. As in, I don’t look to my clothes as an expression of me, I prefer ME to be the expression of me.  

However, our clothes are indeed part of our expression of ourselves, at least a little, regardless of how my hubby and I want to resist that!

In a recent professional communications class, my students and I discussed non-verbal communication, and how non verbal communication makes up more of our messaging than verbal communication does!  And that our clothes, our jewelry, our accessories, etc., make up a lot of our communications.  For us, per our discussion, we talked about what it is that we would want our clothes to say about us, if we must accept that our clothes are part of the conversation (sounds funny when I say it like that.)

All of that is to say - since our clothes do speak for us,  at least to some extent, what do we want to say?  For me, I like some variety but not a lot. I like my clothes to be clean and cared for, I am not attached to brands or status.  Those are all statements I want my clothes to make for me.

Ok, friends, to sum up, 

Powerful questions to ask yourself as you tackle your clothes and closets this Spring to help you create order and better systems for yourself as you get dressed every day:

• How do you get dressed?  And / or, Where do you get dressed?

• The obvious follow up is, How/ where do you WANT to get dressed every day?

• And also, how do you find or decide on what you’re wearing today?

• A useful question as we start to make decisions on our clothes is:  Will you ever?

  • Why did I even buy that item? What was I thinking? Who bought me that, don’t they know my style better?

• A better question, perhaps, for decision making, is “If I was in a store right now, would I buy this item again for tomorrow?” 

• More of a statement, as we make decisions: Let di-use inform you.  And finally, 

• What do we want our clothes to say about us?

Thanks for coming along with me this week as I ventured into my client’s closet, and also my own!

Please let me know if you found these questions helpful, and if you have any other questions that you regularly ask yourself as you organize your clothes and closets!