I "Marie Kondo'd" My Closet — & This Is What Happened

I’ve always considered myself to be a pretty organized person. Everything I own has its own place. The clothes in my dresser drawers are sorted perfectly, my desk at work is spotless, and my bookshelf is organized by book size. Even when I lived with my parents, my closet was color coded and my clothing was arranged by season.

Then, I moved in with my boyfriend (now fiancé), and I thought things would change for the better. Part of the reason we chose our Astoria apartment was because of the sizable walk in closet, and I could not contain my excitement knowing that our clothes would fit and there wouldn’t be an issue with space.

But, things didn’t quite turn out as planned. You see, Jack and I both love clothes, shoes, bags, and sports memorabilia. We also have a hard time getting rid of items we don’t need — like clothes I’ve had since high school that I think I "might" wear again one day. And because of the limited space in the rest of the apartment, we also started using the closet as a storage space for other things. Soon, that spacious walk-in closet also became the permanent home for Christmas decorations, piles of yarn (knitting and crocheting is one of my hobbies), and bags of laundry.

Over the two years living in our apartment together, the giant walk-in closet of my dreams had gotten out of hand. You could barely even walk, let alone stand, in there. Piles of shoes, tote bags, and over 50 baseball caps took over the entire space. My precious clothes ended up rolled up into balls on the top shelf, because it was easier for my 4'11 self to throw them up there rather than folding them nicely. We both knew we had to clean the closet so that it could be more accessible for both of us, but neither of us had taken the initiative to do it. It became easier to just throw sweatshirts up on shelves without folding or caring what they looked like.

Enter our co-worker Meghal Janardan, who offered to step in and help us organize.

Meghal and I “Marie Kondo’d” my closet by taking every single item out to asses the mess, replacing all of the hangers, folding sweaters, organizing the shoes, hats, and bags. Then we got to the real work — finding solutions for all our stuff. Watch the video above to see how we did it, including a nifty little pants-and-hat rack which has changed my fiancé’s life.