Folded and Filed

Clothing storage is a constant battle at our house.  If I'm being honest, I'm kind of a piler.  I'm terrible about putting clothes away.  Yesterday I folded five loads of laundry that I'd done a week ago.  My dresser drawers manage to stay reasonably under control.  Not so on the other side of the bedroom. 

My dear sweet husband has about a thousand t-shirts.  And I swear they're multiplying.  I try to keep his dresser organized so he can find things but it always spirals out of control.  I think the real problem is too many t-shirts.  I try to have nice, neat, folded stacks.  Within a week my stacks have been lost and then I have to put away laundry and I don't feel like fighting a losing battle so I just shove the shirts in the drawer however they'll fit.  And we end up with this.

Why am I showing you guys this?  I mean, this is a crazy mess.  Not cool.  So, since pretty much everything was clean yesterday I decided to come up with a new plan.  Part of the problem with the stacks, you can't really see what's in there.  Then it hit me, why not file the t-shirts instead of stack them.  You know, fold them like normal but put them in sideways instead of flat.

So I pulled out all the shirts and sorted them, mostly by color but a handful went into the donate pile.  Those t-shirts that I don't really ever remember seeing him wear.  I know, the color sorting probably won't last, but a girl can try.  The top drawer became white t-shirts.  It is completely a drawer full.  He has tons of white t-shirts though and he wears one practically every day.

See what I mean by filed?  And this way he can still tell exactly what he has because I folded them so that the picture shows.

I used to try to group the sports shirts (Mizzou, Royals, KC Chiefs) together, but it's easy to still tell what shirt is what, even folded this way.  And it's usually a specific color of like a Chiefs shirt that he's looking for.  Yes, there is a camo section.

This hasn't been time tested yet, but I have high hopes.  And I have plans to organize my dresser the same way.  Even sweaters and the like too, I think.  I'm just imagining how easy it's going to be to find things.  I'm trying to tackle the bedroom clutter, our bedroom is just super small and we both have a lot of clothes.  Yesterday I even moved my vanity to the spare bedroom.  It's where I store socks and undergarments.  But it's a big honkin piece of furniture that only has four tiny drawers.  It just wasn't an effective use of space.  I feel like moving that one piece of furniture made our room feel so much bigger.  I love it.

I must be on an organizing kick because yesterday I came across the perfect mail organization system.  I can't wait to share it tomorrow.  How do you store your clothes?  Do you have a piling problem too?  What's your favorite clothes storage system?  Anybody else file their t-shirts?  I'm pretty sure it's going to be a great plan.