Here’s How to Prep Your Wardrobe—and Your Closet—For Fall and Winter

Crisp fall air is on its way, which means it’s time to make another seasonal wardrobe switch—exchanging light linen dresses and sandals for cardigans and boots.

Here’s how to prep your wardrobe and your closet for fall and winter.

Edit Your Wardrobe

Take some time to review your summer clothes and decide what you’ll keep for next year and what’s taking up too much space in your closet before moving clothes to your overflow closet, packing them away or just moving them to a corner of your closet. This will help you declutter your summer clothes so you don’t need as much space to store them off-season.

As you clean out your closet, make three piles: donate, sell and trash. Be honest in your assessment of each piece. For example, did you avoid wearing that maxi dress for the second year in a row because it’s a tad too small? If so, you might consider donating it to free up space.  You should also consider donating or getting rid of clothes that are out of style, lower quality than what you currently wear or items that have a tear or stain that you know you won’t repair.

Once you’ve sorted through your summer clothes, shoes and accessories, donate the items you no longer need.

Launder Summer Clothes

Before you put away sundresses and tank tops, dry-clean, hand wash or launder your clothes. Doing this helps prevent invisible spots from setting in over time; your clothes will also smell fresh and look better when you do the closet swap next spring.

Importantly, if you have clothes dry cleaned, remove them from plastic bags, which can trap moisture. Ditch the wire hangers in favor of plastic, velvet or wood hangers.

Organize Your Closet

The tricky part of switching from summer to fall is that cold-weather clothes add bulk to your closet. In some cases, this means getting creative about storing sweaters, heavier dresses, boots and scarves.

Sweaters and other knits are best stored folded on shelves. Even better are custom cubbies that are just wide and deep enough for your garments. These smaller spaces will give you greater visibility into what’s in your closet when you’re trying to get ready in the morning.

If you’ve got a large scarf collection, you might keep them in a few different places—a few stashed away in a drawer and tied on some hangers. Free up some precious hanging storage and drawer space and make it easier to see all of your scarves by adding multiple hooks in one place to drape your scarves. Even better, add custom scarf storage where you can drape multiple scarves in one spot so everything is in the same place.

Winter shoes can be difficult to organize. While now-popular booties can easily fit on shoe shelves in your closet, boots with a higher shaft might not have a good home. Try storing boots in their original boxes (plastic containers work well, too) on the floor or a shelf. Keeping flats, sneakers and booties in cubbies and on shelves will free up floor space for boot storage.

Review Seasonal “Staples” & Protect Winter Boots

During your closet organization, you should also review your winter staples to ensure they’re free from stains and tears. Assessing everything now will ensure you know what you need when it comes time to shop. Depending on how well you preserved your clothes from last winter, you may also want to get some coats and heavier items dry cleaned before wearing them.

Take inventory of boots and winter shoes during this swap and treat them before the season starts. You’ll avoid not being able to wear a pair of shoes on a rainy or snowy day because you haven’t gotten around to protecting them.

If you’re ready for an upgrade before fall and winter hit, visit our showroom for inspiration or reach out to us to chat about a custom solution. We’ll schedule an in-home consultation to discuss your storage and organization needs.