5 tips on how to streamline your closet

By Susan Felt
Arizona Republic

If you're looking for a place to begin to unclutter your life, start with the closet. Here are five tips from professional organizer Sandra Kindred (www.2busyorganizers.com) to help save you time and gain order:

• Start with a clean slate. Remove everything. You'll be more discriminating about what you return to the closet.
• Do an initial sort into three piles: toss, donate, keep.
• Remember, 80 percent of the time you wear 20 percent of your clothes. Take a closer look at that 20 percent. Eliminate the miniskirts you keep buying but don't wear. If you think you're in a rut, you probably are. Keep a few trendy pieces to update your look.
• Enlist help. A friend is going to be more objective about what to keep and what to toss than you might be. Kindred's golden rule: If you don't love it and it doesn't make you feel good, get rid of it. Most people have various sizes of clothes in their closet. Kindred says to embrace your size and eliminate the clothes that don't fit.
• Can't quite part with everything you should? For on-the-bubble-items, turn the hanger around. When you wear it, hang it up the right way. By the end of the time limit you've given yourself, check the number of hangers facing the wrong direction and bid the clothes farewell.