I love having a big wardrobe; I have a lot of fun with fashion and having a lot to choose from in the morning is nice.

Unfortunately, my large wardrobe doesn’t always have a lot of room, because I have one standard sized closet and several closets worth of clothes.

If you are renting, doing a big closet renovation isn’t usually possible, and they can sometimes get pretty expensive if you own a home.

I rent and because of this, we move every couple of years anyway. I try to keep my closet organized without  any renovations or major changes to it. Here’s how I do that:

Box Seasonal Items

I have a big plastic bin that I put my seasonal items in on off seasons.

This frees up closet space, and especially for winter stuff, gets rid of the bulky jackets and boots that I won’t be wearing for a few months. This allows me to rotate my wardrobe depending on the season, and I don’t have to shuffle through the irrelevant pieces to find something that I actually might wear that day.

Invest in Storage Bins

Storage bins can be really handy for organizing a small closet. Because most of the clothing hangs on a hanging bar in a closet, it can leave some dead space on the floor of the closet where stray shoes and rogue camisoles tend to collect dust.

Even plastic storage bins from a department store are very useful in organizing an average sized closet. I store my seasonal items in one, and I have a storage bin with drawers for my light items that don’t need hanging, such as t-shirts, camisoles, jeans, and sweatshirts.

Make sure to measure your closet depth before you go out and buy storage bins, because you want them to be able to fit into the closet without a hitch.

Utilize Overhead Space

I used to throw the most random things up on that shelf above the hanging bar, because I didn’t quite know what to do with it. You can’t put anything too heavy up there, for fear of it falling down or breaking the shelf, and for short people like me, I couldn’t stack anything too high either.

I ended up using it for shoes that I wear frequently, and some storage of things that I don’t wear very often but still need to keep, like snow pants and my snowboard jacket. This freed up a lot of hanging space.

I also keep shoes up there that I wear regularly.

Put Items in Sequence

When I am spring cleaning, I try to put all of my closeted items in sequence. I have camisoles and tank tops, followed by blouses (short sleeved, then long sleeved), cardigans, blazers, jackets, skirts, dresses, pants, and so on.

The reason I put them in sequence is because the shorter stuff – camisoles, cardigans, etc – leaves more room below them for bins and other storage.

I have my closet set up in such a way that I have  shoe rack under my shorter items and my boots (which are shorter than my shoe rack) under my taller items.

This also helps me when I’m getting read for work in the morning, because I can easily find whatever it is that I’m looking for.

Create Outfits on Hangers

I find that if there are a couple of pieces of my wardrobe that I wear together the majority of the time, it’s easiest to just hang them on the same hanger.

For example, I have a skirt suit that I wear with one specific camisole together, and rarely wear it with anything else. I put the blazer, skirt, and cami all on one hanger, to maximize space.

There are hangers that you can purchase specifically for this purpose, but even basic clothes hangers usually have some inner hooks for thin straps, a bottom bar for pants or skirts, and a shoulder type structure at the top for the jacket, cardigan or blazer.

This makes life easier for when you need to run out the door quickly, too.

How do you stay organized with a small closet?