Hey it’s Abby and today I wanted to show you the filing method we use to fold our clothes
and store them neatly in our drawers.
This method has been around for years but it was made famous when Marie Kondo wrote
her book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and kind of featured this method.
That's when I read about it first and started using it in our home a little over two years
ago.
So I don’t follow her instructions to a T but I definitely use some of her recommendations
so that we can keep our drawers neat and tidy.
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So let’s get started with t-shirts.
The basic method for folding the t-shirt is to lay it on it’s front so that the back
is facing up.
Then you'll fold in one side about to the middle and fold the sleeve back.
This would be the same for a long sleeve t-shirt as well.
You’d obviously just have more sleeve down the side here.
So then you do the same thing on the other side, fold it in, fold this sleeve back.
Now you’re going to fold it in half.
You’ll bring the top part over to meet the bottom.
So then with my shirts, I just fold it in half one more time making sure that the collar
is in the inside.
So I fold it in half.
This is what you want to have at the end so you can file it nice and neatly in your drawer.
So Donnie’s t-shirts are a little bigger so I modify this a little bit with the way
that I fold his shirts.
So I start the same way.
I fold the one side into the middle and fold the sleeve back.
Do the same thing on the other side, fold the sleeve over nice and neatly, and then
I do the next step the same way as well.
Fold the top back to meet the bottom here.
But since his shirts were bigger and they were kind of getting floppy in his drawer,
I do this next part a little differently.
Instead of just folding it in half, I fold it in thirds.
So I fold the collar in and then I just fold the other end up over top and so this is what
I end up with and it files neatly in his drawer.
So Donnie’s dresser drawers are big and wide so I added some of these SKUBB boxes
from IKEA (I’ll link to them in the description) to hold his shirts nice and neatly so they
weren’t falling over and just becoming a mess in the drawer.
My shirts sat a little nicer so I didn’t have to use boxes.
I just have a row for my tank tops, a row for my long sleeve shirts, then a row for
my t-shirts in my drawer.
I especially love this filing method for t-shirts in my boys’ drawers because they share one
small dresser for 2 boys and so this method allows me to store a lot of t-shirts in their
drawer in not a very big space.
So now let’s talk about folding bottoms.
Let’s start with shorts.
Shorts are fairly easy because there’s not that much material to work with.
For shorts I just start with folding them in half.
Then I’ll fold them in thirds.
So I fold the waistband in and then I’ll just fold the bottom up over top and this
is how they file nice and neatly in the drawer.
Pants are done pretty similarly.
These are my pants.
I just fold them in half and then I fold them in half again bringing the bottom up to the
waistband and then I’ll fold them into thirds so I bring the waistband in and then I bring
this part up and fold it over top.
Again, we create that filing look so they can sit side by side in the drawer.
So those were my kinda regular size pants.
My little Caleb has tiny pants and so that method doesn’t work perfectly for his.
I do his a little differently.
So if you have little ones, you might have to tweak it a little bit and do what I do
for Caleb’s.
I take his little pants.
I fold them in half and instead of then folding them in half again, I take the waistband and
fold it to the middle and I take the ankles and fold them to the middle and then I fold
it in half here and so I get that same shape but I get there a little differently just
because his pants are too small to do it the same way as I did mine.
Again, Donnie’s shorts and pants are the largest so I got these bins from Target that
just slide easily in his drawers and they hold his shorts and pants nice and neatly
in rows.
In my drawers, I can just put my pants and my shorts in neat rows straight into the drawer
without any type of box around them.
And then again for the boys, I can store a lot of pants and shorts in a little drawer
because we use this filing method for Connor and Caleb’s clothes as well.
So the final area I kind of wanted to cover was socks.
Socks can be a little tricky because they’re small, they’re kind of awkward, and I would
say this is the place where I deviate away from Marie Kondo’s rules the most when it
comes to folding.
I do a couple different things with socks so let me show you.
So, first, with Donnie and my dress socks that are longer, I just do a simple fold into
thirds.
So I fold the top in and I fold the bottom up and I can file these cause they’ll stay
like this in the drawer.
I tried all sorts of different ways of folding my smaller athletic socks and no matter what
I did they got messy, it didn’t work, the folding just didn’t really work.
So, for mine, I just stack them up.
All my athletic socks are the same type so I don’t have to worry about putting them
into pairs.
I just make one nice and neat pile in the drawer and then whenever I go to work out,
I just take any two off the top and I’m good to go.
The other types of socks that I do not fold are the boys’ socks.
Again, I tried folding them.
Within about 5 minutes, they would end up in a mess in a pile.
The boys couldn’t find two socks that matched so I just do kind of the traditional.
I put them together and roll them inside each other and then they sit in neat little rows
in the boys’ dresser and they can easily get a pair that matches and put them on themselves.
I had really limited space to store the boys’ socks and undies in their dresser.
They all had to fit in this one little cabinet door so I took pantry bins and I stacked them
up.
I stacked three up right inside there and Connor who is older has two bins, Caleb has
one bin and the socks and undies just sit neatly in there so they can grab them whenever
they need them.
So that is how we fold our clothes.
We’ve been using this method for years.
It’s worked really well for us to keep our clothes neat and tidy in the drawers.
If you have any tips for keeping your clothes neat and organized, I’d love to hear them
in the comments so make sure to leave a comment below and be sure to subscribe so that you
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