What is a floordrobe? A floordrobe is where we have clothes all over the floor instead of it being in the wardrobe. Floor and wardrobe equals ‘Floordrobe’.
Typical things that create a floordrobe are:
- Too Many Clothes.
- No washing routine (or too spread out). Means you have lots of clothes and lots ‘in cycle’.
- No washing baskets in the bedroom or bathroom to collect dirty washing.
- Not enough room in the wardrobe for clean clothes.
- No home for clothes that are clean.
- Nowhere for clothes that you want to wear more than once.
- No home for clothes waiting to be dry cleaned or hand washed.
- No time to process the washing!
So as you can see, there are legitimate reasons why we might have a floordrobe.
How To Avoid a Floordrobe
Let’s work through the above eight options and give you some solutions. Which one(s) do you identify with? What can you do?
Too many clothes? The solution…
Declutter your clothes and get rid of clothes so that there’s not as many clothes around the room to put away and wash.
There’s a few ways to tackle this. You could check out my ebook on creating the ultimate wardrobe.
Don’t wash your clothes often enough? Try this…
Some of my clients only do their washing every 2 to 3 weeks rather than every few days or weekly. This leads to large piles of washing building up, and often baskets sitting around of washed (but unfolded) washing, and a basket of folded clothes that still needs to be put away. Often with a longer washing routine, you need more clothes to be able to cope with this, so it causes additional problems. To overcome this issue, you’ll need to put in a more regular washing routine. Look at your standard week, fortnight or month. When do you have time to put some washing on? Try and add in a few more washes during the month or week.
Sometimes it’s about changing your expectations of your washing cycle too. I always wanted to hang it in the sun so would do it on a weekend. Now, I live in Canberra and often my clothes aren’t dry by the end of the day, so I hang clothes inside on a line. This allows me to put a load of washing on at night and hang it out at 9pm!
Once you’ve set the habit of washing more regularly, you’ll need less clothes and you can cull some out as per tip one. Less to put away, less to wash.
There’s not enough room in your wardrobe for clean clothes, or you don’t have ‘homes’ for each category of clothing item or accessory. A suggestion…
These go hand-in-hand. The solution here is to do a declutter of your clothes. Then group like, with like and give them a home in your wardrobe or drawers. That means, when clean clothes are ready to put away – voila, your clothes are in the cupboard! If there’s space in there, there is no hesitation to open that cupboard and put them away. A good rule to make sure there is space, is to only have each area 70% full. That means culling down your clothes to fit your space (not getting more space, to fit your stuff).
Dirty washing in your floordrobe. What to do…
This one is quite simple to fix. Get a washing basket for the area the clothes are being dumped. Are they on the floor in the bathroom, bedroom, elsewhere? The floordrobe often ends up where we undress. If you have a washing basket set up to capture dirty clothes then you’ve solved this problem. This paired with a regular washing routine will keep it from overflowing.
You have nowhere to put the clothes that you want to wear more than once. A solution…
Some of us choose to wear our clothes several times before they get put in the wash. It depends how you feel about these ‘worn’ clothes hanging with completely clean clothes, and how close between the wears are. Assuming you don’t mind them hanging among your clean clothes, the solution is to just put them back in the wardrobe for another wear.
If you don’t want them with the clean clothes, it’s good to have a dedicated spot for these clothes. Space in your bedroom allowing, you could dedicate a nice chair or a clothes rack to house these ‘wear again’ clothes between wears.
If you don’t have the space in your bedroom to dedicate an armchair to it, the next best thing is to segregate these clothes to a section of your wardrobe. Like one shelf, or the far-right of the hanging space for instance. It’s important to give yourself a space limit (one shelf), or a time limit to wear the item(s). This will stop the pile from overflowing with clothes you want to wear again.
So, if the shelf is overflowing, or it’s been 2 weeks since you’ve worn anything on your shelf, it’s time it got washed.
No home for clothes waiting to be dry cleaned or hand washed? An option for you…
Then it’s time to find somewhere in the laundry or bedroom to store these. You could have a hook on the back of the door to hang these clothes, or a bucket in the laundry for hand washing. Having a space limit to this type of clothing means you know when it’s time to go to the dry cleaner or do some hand washing.
No time to do the washing or put it away? What you can do…
You might need to hire someone to help. There’s plenty of washing and ironing services available for you to call on. Or, you could consider a support person to come in and do it for you. Of course this option costs money so may not be as available to you. Can you trade the task for something you’re extra good at?
These tips will give you some starting points on how to avoid a floordrobe in your bedroom. You can also grab my free six page Step-by-Step Guide to Declutter Your Wardrobe to help you sort out what stays and what goes! Share your floordrobe success stories with us on Facebook.
