Last week I wrote about relocating my cashmere sweaters from my cardigans drawer to a shelf in my closet using the Cambridge Drop-Front Sweater Box. (If you missed it, you can read it here.) I’m still pleased as punch with the changes I made to everything on my closet shelves as a result of this move.
But what about my cardigans drawer itself? I wasn’t planning on doing anything further with the sweaters that remained in there. But removing the zipper bags of cashmere sweaters did not solve the ongoing problems with that drawer, and now I had the space to fix them.
Some of the issues I was having with that drawer may sound familiar to you, as you may be experiencing them with some of your drawers as well:
The shape of the drawer was not ideal for the shape of the folded sweaters.
My drawer, like my dresser, is rectangular. But cardigan sweaters don’t easily fold into rectangles. This makes it hard to neatly fit as many sweaters in the drawer as I would like.
I could only see the sweaters at the top of each pile.
I created three piles of sweaters but had to dig into each pile to find the specific color and print I wanted to wear.
It was hard to distinguish the solid black sweater from the navy blue.
I tried to remember to keep the navy sweater on top of the front pile and the black one on top of the back pile, but they sometimes got rearranged and then I found myself walking around mismatched all day.
I decided to take a cue from Marie Kondo and fold my sweaters another way:
While I kept the bulkier sweaters folded into a pile (on the right), I folded the lighter sweaters (on the left) so that they could stand up. Now I can easily see all of them. I put the navy blue in the front and the black in the back. They are easy to reach and easy to put away so I should have no trouble keeping them apart.
It was easy to get the sweaters to stand up. I just had to fold them one extra time and they were the perfect height for my drawer.
I’ve implemented the Marie Kondo folding method before (see To Fold or Not To Fold). I had already been showing my clients how to fold things that way. It makes the most sense for items that are very different from each other, because you’ll usually be looking for a specific item — like my patterned sweaters, or your decorative scarves. It makes less sense for items that are indistinguishable, like identical pairs of underwear.
