THIS ADVICE WILL KEEP YOUR WORKOUT WARDROBE ORGANIZED

Scheduling workouts is easy. Keeping up with the laundry and organization that comes from your workouts, though? Not so much.

It’s no surprise that your closet has sneakers stacked in a corner, or piles of shorts and tops strewn about in every drawer—and that you can barely find your lucky leggings or compression shorts when you want them. 

So we enlisted professional help to get your closet spring cleaned and functional once and for all. The experts at NEAT Method are breaking down how to fold, file, and keep all your favorite workout gear so that it stays organized all year long. See their tips below.

1. Keep Only The Stuff You Wear. Face it: You reach for the same few pairs of leggings over and over. So that means it’s time to donate the other pairs to someone who will get use out of them! Use this time to sort through the things you love in your closet, and find a good home for everything else.

2. Color Coding Is Key. Once you’ve whittled your collection, it’s time to organize. The cardinal rule of organizing your workout clothes—or anything else in your wardrobe—is that you must color code. 

“It will make finding what you are looking for a breeze,” say the experts at NEAT Method. “We love using the ROY G BIV system to color code both your hanging and folded clothing.” That means keeping everything like-colored together, and organized by their rainbow colors. (Hint: ROY G BIV stands for red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet.)

3. Keep Your Hangers Uniform. This simple detail can mean the difference between a closet that feels completely organized, and one that looks like it’s heaving with product. They recommend black, slim line velvet hangers that will help your technical fabrics stay in place, and are easy to add to when you need more. Plus, they don’t take up a lot of space, so you’ll be able to fit more.

4.  Fold Functionally.  NEAT Method stresses that you can and should hang everything that can hang—which means leggings, sports bras, joggers, and tanks. But assuming you don’t have an 1,000-square-foot closet, there might be some limitations to how much you can realistically throw on hangers. For everything else, there’s folding … but you have to know how to do it right.

For tops, The Neat Method recommends placing an item face down, then folding in both sides so that sleeves (or seams) are facing each other. Then fold the bottom up to meet the top, and fold in half one more time. Repeat this process for everything from sports bras to leggings. For socks, simply place the pair together and fold them in half.

5.  …Then File Everything. Instead of stacking all of your tees on top of each other in one big pile that topples over as soon as you pull out ones in the middle, the recommendation is to fold everything and “file” it, lengthwise in a drawer or bin.

6.  Use Bins To Keep Things Straight.  If you don’t have a lot of drawers or shelving space, NEAT recommends labeled bins to keep everything in one place. Use them like drawers, with everything file folded inside accordingly.

7. Organize Efficiently.  When deciding where things go within your closet, it’s recommended to keep tops up top, and bottoms on the bottom. For drawers, they recommend keeping things that you’re likely to reach for over and over up top, like underwear, socks, and bras, and then keep tops under that and bottoms below that.

8.  Keep Your Favorites On Display. Give your hats and backpacks shelf space—you’re more likely to wear them or use them if you can see them, and it makes your whole closet feel more like a cool spot to feature your favorite pieces when some are given a place of honor.

What's your closet organization trick? Tell us @Reebok

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