I’ve lived in my share of apartments with limited storage space, which means I’ve had to get creative with how I store my clothes. I haven’t had a dresser in over 15 years! I ditched it when I moved into a studio apartment where a dresser didn’t make sense in the layout. Two apartments later, and I still don’t have a dresser.

I end up storing a good deal of clothes in boxes or bins, which then go onto shelves or into cabinets. Here’s a few tricks I’ve learned.

1. Fold clothes and store upright.

Fold clothes into short rectangles, and then store upright. I prefer storing upright to stacking because that way I can see everything. When I stack, I tend to forget what’s at the bottom of the pile.

Here’s how I fold T-shirts so that they can fit in a shoe box:

Marie Kondo has a similar method of folding so that clothes stand up, but I will have you know I was doing this before she came on the scene.

2. If you can’t fold it, roll it.

As I shared in this post about adding legs to an Ikea bookshelf, I’m using a Kallax shelf with bins to store clothes because I don’t have room for a dresser.

However, each cube (and thus bin) is 13″ tall. That height is not ideal for clothes storage. Unlike the shoe boxes above, the bins are deep. If I stored T-shirts in these bins in a similar manner to the shoe box, there’d be a lot of wasted space in each bin. And I can’t really fold T-shirts or other soft clothes into taller rectangles because they wouldn’t keep that shape for long. They’d collapse into a messy pile.

My solution? Roll the clothes and store them on their ends. This allows me to pack more in while allowing me to see everything.

Here’s how I’m storing workout and outdoor clothes:

3. Use cardboard to make dividers.

When organizing, cardboard is your friend.

You may have noticed that the clothes above have some help from dividers. I made these dividers from cardboard. When organizing, cardboard is your friend. I love using cardboard as it’s easy to cut and adapt to your needs. Plus, you’re reusing something that was destined for the recycling bin.

Here’s how I used cardboard to organize my belts. In my previous apartment, I hung my belts up on a wall inside my closet. But my current apartment doesn’t have that kind of space, so I moved my belts to a shoe box.

It was important to me for the box to be organized, so that meant it was time for cardboard:

Once again, I’m able to see everything in the box at a glance.

See my whole process here:

 

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These methods have helped me easily organize my clothes and accessories even when I didn’t have much space. And I didn’t have to spend that much money either. Sure, I bought the Ikea bins so they’d fit perfectly into the Kallax shelf. And I’ve acquired some canvas bins, plastic bins, and clear plastic boxes. But in many cases, I try to reuse items I already have like shoe boxes and cardboard.

Of course, this works for organizing other items too. I use shoeboxes and bins in my linen closet, for my toiletries, and under the sink — pretty much everywhere.