How to Create a Dream Wardrobe in Your Tiny Home: 5 Smart Decluttering Tips
What’s the question I get asked most about my tiny home? “Where do you put your clothes?” I always tell my friends that I have plenty of room to store my wardrobe. My closet is curated to hold my favorites for each season.
Is a dream wardrobe really possible in a tiny home?
Can you have everything you could possibly need in a tiny home closet?
Does a minimal wardrobe mean your clothes are boring and that you can have no color?
I believe that you don’t have to go shopping to have a wardrobe refresh.
You can shop your own closet. Once your wardrobe is refreshed with clothes you already own, you can feel the same feeling you get as when you walk into a cute boutique. Make your own closet your boutique. Pick out the clothes that you haven’t worn in a long time and try to restyle them.
Decluttering your clothes helps you save time and money in that you spend less time shopping for things you already have and more time enjoying making new outfits out of your well loved pieces.
Here are the steps I took to get my curated closet capsule.
Dress up! Make it Fun.
Pull everything out and put it all together in one spot.
Keep your favorites
Edit what’s left
Create your closet boutique
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Step 1. Dress up!
Marie Kondo says to put on your best dressed outfit to tidy up your things, including your wardrobe.
the life-changing magic of tidying up
To get ready to create my spring capsule collection and declutter my wardrobe, I picked out my nice pieces too.
I chose my Brooks Brothers pink linen button down long sleeve top with my favorite jeans, the Everlane 90’s Cheeky Jean.
Everlane 90s Cheeky Jean
I accessorized with my stainless steel moose necklace from Yellowstone and my sterling silver hoops that were a gift from Belgium.
Step 2. Pull everything out
The second step to creating a curated closet and decluttering your tiny home wardrobe is to pull everything out and put it all in one spot. The key is to have all of your clothes washed. Most likely, your decluttering will happen on your bed. If you keep your wardrobe in the bedroom then that’s a good flat surface to make your wardrobe refresh happen.
Living in a tiny home, we have had to do a lot of customization to our wardrobe. It hasn’t been easy to keep our things to a minimum, even though I consider us pretty minimalist-ish. As Chrystina Mychas calls it (@Christinamychas). The way we have our clothes spread out in the tiny house is pretty unique.
We originally were going to have a queen bed in our bedroom, but once we realized how much space that was going to take up, we changed our minds. The queen bed wouldn’t have allowed us to even step inside our bedroom coming from our outside door. Changing the bed to a full size solved that problem. The length of a full lets us walk right around the bed from the outside in around the bed to the bathroom pocket door without any trouble. Another plus to getting a full instead of a queen meant more closet space for me. My closet is left of the bed and goes pretty high up close to the ceiling.
I do have to use a step stool to reach the top rack of my closet, but I don’t mind that as much.
3-Step Gold Ladder
Step 3. Keep your favorites
This leads me to the third step in creating a curated capsule. Say that three times fast.
Decluttering is hard. There’s no way around it. There is one easy part to decluttering, and that is picking out your favorites. You know what you wear all the time. Pull out the clothes that your friends always tell you you look great in. Put those pieces aside and know that they’re an easy “yes”.
For me, most of my favorite pieces are hanging in my closet that my dad and I designed and built. I store my longer pieces like dresses and pants, and my coat on the top rung and hang my shirts on the bottom rung. I also have space for a two drawer unit that holds my tees, camis and pjs.
Two drawer storage bin
While my dad built the wall cabinet that holds the hanging clothes, I bought the nightstand that sits right below it. It has three drawers and is white. Since I put rose gold hardware on all of my kitchen and bedroom cabinets, it looks seamless and like it all is part of one custom set. I’m very happy with the way it turned out. I use the drawers in my nightstand to hold my makeup, as well as our socks drawers. When my dad installed the nightstand, he caulked around the back and left side of it to add a classy finishing touch. It makes the nightstand look like it was built in.
Rose Gold Handles
Rose Gold Knobs
Jason and I have two cabinets above the bed for more clothes storage. He uses the right cabinet. He also sleeps on the right side of the bed. No wonder he always wakes up in a good mood.😂 I use the left cabinet closest to my hanging clothes. I store my purses and work clothes in bins. I have a bin for workout clothes and another bin for swimsuits and scarves. This is also where I store a bin with our second set of bed sheets and my manicure kit. Yes, that’s random but it fits just right. I have a few nail polish colors and a gel nail lamp along with some gel nail colors
Grey Woven Basket
Jason’s closet is in the kitchen. We know it’s not conventional, but really neither is a tiny house. It works for us. Jason hangs his dress shirts, pants, and suits in his closet. It also holds our dirty laundry basket. Behind the laundry basket is part of our fender or wheel well. It made for a good spot to store some filing folders of office paperwork.
Step 4. The closet edit
The next step to curating your closet is editing it. Now this is the hardest part.
Editing your clothes means keeping the things you love and decluttering the ones you don’t. If you go through your clothes and just keep what you absolutely love and wear all of the time anyway, you’re going to make decluttering easier.
If there’s an item of clothing there that you aren’t wearing and don’t see yourself wearing any time soon, then it’s time to say goodbye. These closet space hoarders are not letting you see what options you really do have that you can wear better.
Give your clothes room to breathe. This not only makes it easier to find what to wear, but it’s also better for your clothes. The less clothes you have stuffed in one place, the less likely your clothes will get wrinkled.
Trying on that favorite spring dress you had stored away all winter can give you that same dopamine hit as you would get if you went shopping to buy a cute new dress at Target. It’s the same, except better because it’s sustainable and you didn’t have to spend any money.
So once you’ve kept your easy “yesses” then go ahead and look at your “maybes” again
Two questions to ask yourself are:
If I saw this at the store today, would I buy it?
Does it fit me now? (In this season of life.)
Be happy with the size you are now and keep the clothes that make you feel good in your body. It’s not just about what you’re wearing, it’s also about how you wear it. If it’s uncomfortable or doesn’t suit you, it’ll show in how you carry yourself.
By now you should have several piles of clothes. Your “yes” pile just got bigger with the “maybes” that you decided to keep. Your “no” pile could be separated into what you can sell, donate, gift, or throw away. The most sustainable options of course would be to sell or give away. Giving your clothes to someone in particular is better than donating it to Goodwill or another used clothing store since they will resell it and the likelihood of it going to the trash anyway is pretty high. Reusing your old clothes is also an option. I cut up a workout top and reused it as a cleaning rag.
Step 5. Create Your Closet Boutique
The best part of decluttering is the final step. This is where you get to put all of your favorite clothes away in the most sensible place for you. It has to be practical and organized. Since your closet is empty when you start this step, take time to clean it. Remove the dust and give it a fresh clean spray and wipe down. If you’re hanging your blouses all together, can you color coordinate them? Can you hang all your sleeveless tops together next to your short sleeves followed by your long sleeve tops?
Speaking of hanging, another recommendation for a cohesive wardrobe is having the same color, type and size hangers. I love using velvet hangers for my blouses and dresses.
For our pants, using a collapsible pants hanger is space saving.
In Florida it feels like we only have three seasons: cool for a minute, hot and really hot. Some nights of course can be cold while it’s really hot during the day. At least once I put my sweaters and coats away, they’ll be put away for many months. Where do I store seasonal clothes in a tiny house you ask? Under the bed of course! We built a custom bed and attached the gas strut RV bedlift hardware to the sides of it. We can lift it up and it stays up on its own.
RV Bedlift Kit
It’s a super cool feature and adds a ton of storage space. We also store our shoes in drawers under the bed that can be accessed without having to lift the top of the bed up at all. So vacuum sealed bags are our friends when it comes to storing seasonal clothes. They don’t last forever. When they work, there’s a fantastic feeling to watch the big bulky bag shrink into a tiny little package that stores away so conveniently.
Vacuum bags
And that’s it! You just curated your tiny home wardrobe and created your closet boutique. If you need more help in building your tiny home dream, make sure you sign up for our newsletter and grab our FREE resource guide on the best resources we used during our 18-month build process that will save you time and money.
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Until next time,
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