Make Way: How To Prep Your Closet for Fall

Fall is the season of aesthetic color-changing leaves, scrumptious pumpkin spice lattes, and, most importantly, fashion! Now that this fan-favorite season has arrived, you’re probably thinking about your closet.

As the weather gets chiller, you’ll need to swap out your summer shorts and tank tops for autumn jeans and cardigans. But before you tear apart your closet, check out these top tips on how to prep your closet for fall and make way for cozy fall fashions seamlessly.

Clean and Organize Your Closet

To start, you’ll want to clean out your closet and organize your summer clothes. Remove all articles of clothing from your wardrobe (including shoes and accessories) and sort them into piles. Have one pile for items you want to keep, another for items you want to sell or donate, and another for items that you want to keep but that require professional cleaning or tailoring before you can wear them.

Next, grab the cleaning supplies and clean up your closet. Use a duster or a damp rag to wipe down any surfaces and a vacuum or mop (depending on whether you have carpet or hard surface floors) to tidy the floors.

Summer Stuff: Store or Keep?

The next step in prepping your closet for fall in is sifting throFall is the season of aesthetic color-changing leaves, scrumptious pumpkin spice lattes, and, most importantly, fashion! Now that this fan-favorite season has arrived, you’re probably thinking about your closet.

As the weather gets chiller, you’ll need to swap out your summer shorts and tank tops for autumn jeans and cardigans. But before you tear apart your closet, check out these top tips on how to prep your closet for fall and make way for cozy fall fashions seamlessly.

Clean and Organize Your Closet

To start, you’ll want to clean out your closet and organize your summer clothes. Remove all articles of clothing from your wardrobe (including shoes and accessories) and sort them into piles. Have one pile for items you want to keep, another for items you want to sell or donate, and another for items that you want to keep but that require professional cleaning or tailoring before you can wear them.

Next, grab the cleaning supplies and clean up your closet. Use a duster or a damp rag to wipe down any surfaces and a vacuum or mop (depending on whether you have carpet or hard surface floors) to tidy the floors.

Summer Stuff: Store or Keep?

The next step in prepping your closet for fall in is sifting through your keep pile. These are items you know you want to keep, but where are you going to store them?

Shorts, tank tops, and sandals aren’t warm enough for the winter, but fall tends to have milder weather and temperatures, which means you can transition a lot of your summer clothes to fall. You can wear shorts with tights or leggings underneath, and you can easily toss a cardigan over a tank or short-sleeved shirt.

Like before, sort your items into piles. Make one pile for items you won’t wear in fall and another for ones you will. Place the former pile into boxes and store them somewhere safe, and re-integrate the latter pile back into your wardrobe.

Break Out the Jeans and Jackets

Before you start cramming your fall and winter clothes into your closet, give them some time to breathe.

They’ve been crammed into a container for months and probably smell like cardboard or plastic—not the most fragrant scent! Depending on how airtight the container you stored them in is, they may even be covered in dust or have families of creepy crawlies living inside the sleeves. Gross!

Let them air out for a day (24-48 hours), and then toss them in the wash before you fill your closet with them.ugh your keep pile. These are items you know you want to keep, but where are you going to store them?

Shorts, tank tops, and sandals aren’t warm enough for the winter, but fall tends to have milder weather and temperatures, which means you can transition a lot of your summer clothes to fall. You can wear shorts with tights or leggings underneath, and you can easily toss a cardigan over a tank or short-sleeved shirt.

Like before, sort your items into piles. Make one pile for items you won’t wear in fall and another for ones you will. Place the former pile into boxes and store them somewhere safe, and re-integrate the latter pile back into your wardrobe.

Break Out the Jeans and Jackets

Before you start cramming your fall and winter clothes into your closet, give them some time to breathe.

They’ve been crammed into a container for months and probably smell like cardboard or plastic—not the most fragrant scent! Depending on how airtight the container you stored them in is, they may even be covered in dust or have families of creepy crawlies living inside the sleeves. Gross!

Let them air out for a day (24-48 hours), and then toss them in the wash before you fill your closet with them.

Cleaning Up Your Yard Before the Holiday Season

Decorating for the holidays is one of the best ways to make the coming season more exciting. People tend to spend a lot of time decorating the inside of their home, but it’s important to also focus on the outside of your home, namely your yard. A nice yard means you’ll have room to decorate outside, or just generally be ready for when the season turns cold, and being outside for long periods of time won’t be as enjoyable. Cleaning up your yard now means you won’t have to worry about it while celebrating with friends and family later.

Rake The Leaves

If there are still leaves on the ground, then you should rake them up. Raking the leaves not only makes your yard look better almost instantly but also helps you prepare for spring. You should also aerate your yard. This allows more nutrients, oxygen, and water to reach the roots, even while it’s freezing outside. Keep in mind that the leaves that you rake up can be used for compost, especially the more rotted they are.

Declutter

Clutter of any kind can ruin your yard. You should get rid of everything in your yard that you do not need anymore, whether that be lawn furniture and decorations or children’s toys your kids have outgrown. If something is broken and cannot be fixed, then you should throw it out immediately. You may also want to get rid of things that you have not used in a long time.

Get Rid of the Debris

Debris is another thing that can cause your lawn to look bad. If you have branches and sticks laying around your yard, then you should gather them up and throw them away. You should also clean up any pet droppings that might be hiding in the grass. Look around for trash and pick it up if you see it.

Maintain Your Septic Tank

Septic tank maintenance is extremely important. Not only when trying to clean up your lawn, but because of what it takes care of inside your house. It would be a good idea to check over your septic tank while you are outside working on your yard. If your septic tank is working properly, then it should be easier for you to preserve your yard. A working septic tank will be less likely to flood your yard and cause sinkholes. Maintenance helps keep your septic tank for a long time. A well-cared-for septic tank can last for 40 years or more.

Maintaining your septic tank helps you do your part to protect the environment. The pollutants and bacteria inside of the septic tank can end up in your yard. They can also end up in the air. The pollutants can also end up in your drinking water.

As the holiday season approaches, you should turn your attention to making sure the outside of your property is just as ready as the inside. Cleaning up your yard not only gets it ready if you want to decorate it but also takes care of everything before any festivities begin so you don’t have to worry about it and can instead enjoy being with friends and family.

Clutter Zones: The Most Common Cluttered Areas in Your Home

We all have a few places in the home that tend to collect unneeded items. However, some of them build more quickly than others, and many can go unnoticed until it’s too late. Fortunately, by identifying these clutter hotspots, you can make a conscious effort to organize them and keep your home cleaner in the long run. These are the most common cluttered areas in your home and how to stop the accumulation before it starts.

Clothing Closet

Clothing is one of the most prominent types of clutter homeowners struggle with. These items are easy to obtain and difficult to part with once you have them in your closet. Believe it or not, you might not even wear half of what you currently store. Make sure you occasionally sort through your garments and donate any of them that you don’t wear often.

Bathroom Cabinets

A lot of us can collect hygiene products in the same way. Our bathroom cabinets only have so much space, and it’s common for these shelves to accumulate all kinds of clutter. There’s more here than we often comprehend, from extra skin-care formulas to razors and other grooming accessories. If you want to maintain organized cabinets, purge any expired or broken items.

The Garage

Our garage space is one of the largest offenders. Tools, automotive parts, and ongoing projects can all build up over time, creating a space that’s hazardous to even walk through. In fact, cluttered garages present the most significant risk for injury if you trip and fall on unorganized items. For this reason, stay on the lookout for warning signs that your garage is too cluttered, and act before someone gets hurt.

Under the Bed

Another of the most common cluttered areas in your home that you didn’t know about is underneath your bed. Maybe you’re missing one of your slippers, or you just can’t seem to find the other half of an outfit. Somehow, they all seem to find their way under your bed, and it can overflow before you even realize it. Routinely checking this spot will prevent an abundance of clutter and help you keep better track of your possessions.

The Junk Drawer

No list of clutter spots would be complete, though, without the infamous junk drawer. The entire purpose of a junk drawer is to house miscellaneous things that otherwise don’t have a home. However, years of throwing your odds and ends into this drawer can turn it into such a mess that it’s impossible to find anything in it. Because of this, it’s best to organize this area of your home every few months.

Tidy home, tidy mind: why a clean space is important for your mental health

Whilst it can be difficult to get out of bed or have any energy when you’re struggling with a mental illness, cleaning can be a good way of gaining control over your environment. It allows you to see a visible improvement in your space, as well as offering a task that can be done in bursts, rather than all at once. 

Here, we take a look at exactly how cleaning can be beneficial to maintaining good mental health.

Clutter

For a lot of people, clutter can lead to a lack of concentration, as they get distracted by the environment around them. A study by researchers at Princeton University found that people with objects around them which were irrelevant to the task had an overload in their visual cortex, leading to a lack of concentration.

Being unable to focus when needed can then lead to feelings of irritability and stress. It can also induce a sense of a lack of control, both of which are unhelpful for those already struggling with spiralling thoughts.

However, it is important to remember that you should take care to avoid cleaning becoming a compulsion: whilst cleaning can be satisfying and will help you take control of your environment, creating a dependency on it is harmful. If you’re struggling to relax unless your surroundings are perfect, it might be time to consider if using cleaning as a method of destressing is still working for you. 

If you are worried about compulsivity but still want a clean space, it could be worth considering hiring a cleaner. You shouldn’t have to sign a contract with them, so you can book a one-off clean and assess if you need them the following week, or go back to doing it yourself.

Physical and mental health

If you’ve ever felt your arms ache after holding up a duster, or from pushing the hoover around, you’ll know that cleaning is definitely a physical exercise. Exercise releases endorphins, which are chemicals in your body that trigger feelings of happiness. They also work with your pain receptors to dim your perception of pain.

Regular exercise has been shown to be an effective treatment for mild to moderate depression, as well as being beneficial for anxiety management. No matter what size your home is, there are places to clean. As well as dusting, try squatting when you put items away, lunging when you hoover or wash the floor, and using circular motions to wash plates for longer than you usually would. Adding music to your cleaning routine can be a great way of getting you moving.

Cleaning and the bedroom

Creating a tidy environment in your bedroom may also help you sleep better. As well as creating a visually calming environment, you should ensure that you air out the room so that it smells clean, and not musty. In addition to just smelling nicer, fresh air has been shown to be beneficial, because it contains more oxygen than stale air that has been trapped in the room. By doing this, you make sure that if you are spending time in bed, you’re helping your brain at the same time.

To sum up

Whilst cleaning might be the last thing you think of when it comes to mental health, they are actually closely linked. Creating a clean, safe space around you so that you can rest, whilst also getting your endorphins up through gentle exercise, can be a helpful way to support yourself at a challenging time.