How To Properly Store Your Clothes

If you’ve ever done laundry, surely you’ve come across the care guides attached to each garment. Every item of clothing, depending on the style, fabric, and how they’re made, requires different care instructions. Thankfully, care guides are always provided. Unfortunately for us, though, they only teach us until the ironing stage. Each garment also needs to be stored differently depending on how they’re made. While others are better hung, some should be folded. To ensure you’re not damaging your whole wardrobe, here are tips on how you can store your clothes properly:

HANG

IMAGE Hans Fausto

You'd need hangers when organizing clothes with natural or delicate fabrics like silk, cotton, linen, rayon, velvet, and satin. These clothes tend to crease easily so after some good ironing, it’s best to keep them hung to avoid wrinkles. If the item is a button-down shirt, make sure to keep the top button clasped to avoid your collars from permanent creases. Those who have skirts in these fabrics or simple dress skirts, may hang them by the waist band using clothespins or hangers with clips.

Dresses, jumpsuits, trousers, and dress pants should be hung vertically to avoid unnecessary sagging or stretching of the width. For dress pants and trousers, you can fold them at the crease and hang them over the bar of a hanger or clip them by the waistband using clothespins.

Blazers, jackets, and coats should always be hung. Make sure the hangers you use can carry their weight (wood hangers are best for these) to hold their shape. Remember that anything that will bend from their weight will permanently distort them; especially coats and blazers that are tailored.

FOLD

IMAGE Dairy Darilag

Against popular opinion, knit sweaters should always be folded. Hanging them will cause them to stretch so it’s best to keep them folded in your closet. If you don’t have a lot of closet space for bulky items like sweaters, you can fold them in half and let them hang on the bar of the hanger.

Dresses and gowns are normally best stored on hangers but if they have heavy embellishments, you might want to loosely fold them instead. You don’t want the weight to drag down on the top half of the dress so fold them loosely and store them in the box it came in or a storage bag.

Casual skirts and pants such as wrap skirts, denim skirts, jeans can be kept folded in the closet. Since the fabrics are heavier, they won’t wrinkle as easily.