When it comes to organizing and storing your clothes according to the KonMari Method, the preferred way is to fold as many items as possible and store them in dressers, drawers and/or baskets. But there are of course items that are better to be hung. In this post, I will give you the low down on what these items are and where you can draw the line with regards to folding vs. hanging clothes.
(Also, check out my roundup of products useful to organize clothes.)
Ground Rules
It is recommended to hang every item that appears to be happier when it’s hung (sort of quoting Marie Kondo here; couldn’t find the actual quote – but I know I read it somewhere in her book). Generally, these are things that are either hard to fold or that would wrinkle too easily when folded. I usually recommend to hang up coats, jackets, suits, dresses, skirts, shirts, blouses and dress pants (or all pants with a crease, for that matter). These clothing sub-categories are a good first start in determining what clothes are better to be hung.
Like With Like (or RULE #1)
But sometimes lines can get a bit blurry and you might have skirts that are perfectly fine to be folded and some that are better to be hung (just as an example). To avoid confusion and blurry lines, I always recommend that you keep sub-categories together as much as possible. So when it comes to the example with the skirts, hang up all of your skirts if you have the space and if the number of skirts is not vast. By doing this, you will always know that you can find all your skirts in one spot (either in the hanging or the folded part of your closet).
Pay Attention To Texture (or RULE #2)
If the material of the item(s) in question is silky, flimsy, heavily textured or embellished, I recommend you hang them up. Now, by doing this, you might not always be able to stick to rule #1. Let’s say the majority of your short sleeve tops are soft jersey and best to be folded. And then there might only be one or two short sleeves with embellishments that prevents them from being folded and thus you have to hang them up. In that case, rather than hanging up aaaall your short sleeve tops, just hang up the embellished ones. You can think of this as breaking rule #1 or just simply that you hang up your “dressy short sleeve tops” (which you might think of as a separate sub-category).
Basically, when it comes to it, just follow your intuition on whether rule #1 overrules rule #2 or the other way around.
Pay Attention To Your Space (or RULE #3)
If folding space is scarce and hanging space is plenty, it’s perfectly fine to hang up sub-categories that would generally be considered as items to fold. In cases like that, I would suggest to hang up all your pants, jeans, shorts, sweatshirts and/or long sleeves.
PS: Check out my roundup of products useful to organize clothes.
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