G E T S O RT E D !

IStylist explains how to wrangle your wardrobe

f you have a closet full of clothes, but feel like you have nothing to wear, that usually means you have too much, rather than nothing. You need to take everything out of your wardrobe, give your wardrobe a good clean and then spend time with every piece of clothing and make an active decision whether to put it back or not. Look at every single thing, one by one, and think, do I really love this?

It sounds simple but chances are you wear 20 per cent of your clothes 80 per cent of the time. The rest is stuff you think might be useful or stuff you “should” wear. Ditch the “should” and figure out what it is you really like.

When you get dressed in the morning you have to make a decision: do I want to wear it, will it make me feel good, does it fit in with my day?

For things you really love but you're not wearing, keep them, but get it out of your reachable wardrobe. I use baskets at the top of my wardrobe. You could also use fabric garment storage bags. Underneath the bed is a good place for these things.

I keep like-with-like in my wardrobe. All of the dresses together, all of the pants together, all of the T-shirts together.

You have too many of one thing when you feel overwhelmed and it is stopping you being able to make choices about what you're going to wear.

I like to fold any type of trackpants or casual pants, and hang anything more formal. Kmart has great clear dividers that clip on to your shelves to make two distinct folded piles.

I'm picky about using wooden hangers. People love those little flocked velvet hangers because they can fit more, but if your clothes have to be so jammed together that you can't see anything, chances are you have too many things in there. Wooden hangers are better for naturally spacing your clothes.

In my world everyone should own ankle boots, some type of summer shoes you can wear all the time and still feel cute, and a fantastic pair of sneakers that are a bit of fun. I really try to steer people away from only owning black shoes. A great swap out for black is gold.

I pack away seasonally but not a lot. Maybe one small basket. If it's a summer item, chances are you can layer it for winter, so I tend to store things like heavy winter coats.

Don't store your clothes in plastic. Even after one season, clothes can get really damp because there's no airflow in a plastic tub.

Go back and re-edit every season. Get those baskets down and reassess. “Do I still fit these? If I did fit, would I still want it?”

For items you no longer want, resell or donate. Every piece of clothing we could possibly want is already out there, your dream outfit is probably in someone else's wardrobe. I love Everlasting, a charity that sells your clothes and uses the money to help women directly in the community.

If you do one thing...

Make sure you have a go-to outfit in your wardrobe that you absolutely love, so that if you are standing there feeling totally overwhelmed, you can reach for the area where your safe things live.