How to Organize and Clean Out Your Closet for the New Year

Closets are great storage areas for the things you choose to keep tucked away in your home. A great way to start off the new year is to organize and clean out your closet. With these smaller storage rooms, it is easy to get disorganized and messy; that’s why we turn to professionals to share their closet cleaning tips and tricks to optimize cramped spaces. So whether you’re wondering how to clean out your walk-in closet or tidy up a coat closet, our guide through our best cleaning ideas will help you keep organized.

Table of Contents

1. Add Individual Storage Containers for the Whole Family 
2. Place Similar Items Together for a More Orderly Look
3. Storage Decor Can Tie Your Room Together
4. Optimize Every Inch of Your Closet
5. Containers Can Help You Stay Coordinated
6. Box Up Cherished Items to Keep Them Safe 
7. Label Drawers to Keep Items Organized
8. Keeping Your Clothes Clean Will Keep Your Closet Clean
9. How to Clean Out a Closet and Create More Room? Only Keep Essential Items 
10. Start by Decluttering Your Entire Closet
11. Reduce the Number of Things You Have in Your Closet
12. Come Up With a System to Help You Decide What to Keep
13. Customize Your Closet to Fit Your Needs
14. Organize Your Items by Accessibility

Learn More About the Art of Cleaning

1. Add Individual Storage Containers for the Whole Family

Look to colorful, labeled fabric storage containers to segregate your things for small spaces like closets. For instance, a great way to organize different items, especially for multiple people, is to add a storage box with a rewritable label for each member of the family. Color coordinate the boxes; let everyone in the family choose their favorite color. This is how to clean out your closet and ensure everyone can find their things easily. – meori

2. Place Similar Items Together for a More Orderly Look

You’d be surprised at how much you can store in a closet with the right cleaning ideas. Organize like items together for quicker retrieval and return. Use sleeve or garment length in increasing/decreasing order rather than color code as a guide to arranging items. Lastly, use walls and vertical spaces including doors, to maximize every inch of space by hanging accessories and jewelry. – Mess No More Organizing

3. Storage Decor Can Tie Your Room Together

How to clean out your closet while avoiding your things becoming an eyesore in your house, you ask? Easy. Stylish storage boxes are your best friends. Store all unseasonal items under either your bed or higher up in your closet. Use the storage space for extra suitcases or outerwear. Make extra space in your bedroom by hanging a modular shelving system to store your essentials and then display the prettiest items out in the open as decor. – AllBetter

4. Optimize Every Inch of Your Closet

Wondering how to clean out your closet and make every little bit of space count? If you have the budget, you can invest in a custom closet solution to best utilize every square inch of the closet. If not, an excellent closet cleaning idea is to use reusable containers. So often, the height of a closet is not effectively used and so much usable space is being wasted. If there’s space in the closet, you can add foldable drawers to organize undergarments, socks, and other delicate items. – iSO Design

5. Containers Can Help You Stay Coordinated

Treating the closet like a container and placing things loosely on shelves is exactly how not to clean out a closet. Doing that quickly leads to an unorganized mess. Instead, turning those shelves into drawers by using smaller containers provides structure and order and maximizes otherwise wasted vertical space. – This Mom Knows

6. Box Up Cherished Items to Keep Them Safe 

Give children, just like adults, a way to keep special items safe. A good tip while cleaning your closet is to use lidded storage containers. During a downsizing session, gift your child a special “treasure box” to maybe put aside the macaroni necklaces or popsicle picture frames that they’ve put so much love into. – Megan Sears Organization

7. Label Drawers to Keep Items Organized

8. Keeping Your Clothes Clean Will Keep Your Closet Clean

Getting longevity out of your clothes should be a priority for you. Incidentally, this is also how to clean out your closet and keep it looking clean for longer. We recommend clearing out your wardrobe to keep only essential, versatile pieces. Buy quality over quantity and take care of the pieces you have by repairing and cleaning them regularly. Creating a clean, organized closet keeps your wardrobe light and airy. This way your clothes won’t pill, develop an odor, or collect dust and it will help you get more out of everything in your wardrobe. – Helena’s Cleaners

9. How to Clean Out a Closet and Create More Room? Only Keep Essential Items 

Christmas and New Year shopping is bound to stretch your household storage space to the limit. Follow these closet cleaning tips to avoid leaving all your gifts and purchases in plain view. First, get rid of items you don’t love, use, or wouldn’t buy again. Once that’s done, sort into large categories. Finally, sort items by use. The middle shelf should include the things you use most often. – Cleaning by Carrie

10. Start by Decluttering Your Entire Closet

When it comes to organization, people mostly struggle with taking the initial step of actually beginning to organize. So, how to get started with cleaning out your closet? Our idea — let go of everything that’s disposable. Pull everything out of the closet and separate clothing into three piles: 

1. Absolutely keep 
2. Maybes
3. Life would be better without this

This way, you can organize your items, as well as separate the good from the bad, the emotional from the indifferent, and the happy memories from the “oh that really did happen” ones lurking in your wardrobe. The best and most practical closet cleaning tip is to look in the mirror, take a deep breath, and tell yourself “You got this!” — because you really do! – South Star Cleaning

11. Reduce the Number of Things You Have in Your Closet

If you’ve been pondering how to clean out your closet and get it ready for the New Year, one closet cleaning idea is minimizing the items that you own. Keeping the items that make you feel confident, comfortable, and fit your current season of life will make getting ready for the day more enjoyable and less stressful. Ring in the New Year with a more intentional closet that not only will make you smile but will make you look good! – My Canadian Home

12. Come Up With Closet Cleaning Ideas to Help You Decide What to Keep

Deciding how to triage your clothes when you clean out your closet can be tougher than it seems. Here’s what we suggest. Hang your clothes with the hangers facing the same direction. Once you wear something, hang it back in the opposite direction. At the end of the season or year, all hangers in the original position (meaning they were not worn) get an eviction notice – donate, give-away, or do an online closet sale! – The Mess Masters

13. Customize Your Closet to Fit Your Needs

Put some thought into how to make your closet work for you as you clean it out. Check out different shelving systems to customize and use all the space in there. When organizing, try to color coordinate and hang clothing by type – long dresses in one section, coats/jackets in another, and fold up your denims, while displaying your favorite shoes. Make sure to fold or properly hang your sweaters to avoid stretching! – By Skyler Renee

14. Organize Your Items by Accessibility

The biggest mistake people often make is putting too many items in one area because they’re in a specific category. When organizing a closet, the main thing you should focus on is accessibility. A good way to achieve this is using the two-finger rule. You should aim to have at least a two-finger distance between each hanger in the closet so that you can easily see and pick the clothes you like. – VQ Spaces

Learn More About the Art of Cleaning

Looking for more closet cleaning tips and ideas? Browse through our blog for more tips on how to clean out your closet, organize your workstations and playrooms, and more. Discover new ways to organize your life with meori.