One of my absolute favorite tips to share with clients is how to save space in dresser drawers. How many of you, or your kids, end up with tons of casual t-shirts? I know I end up with a lot of them from participating in 5k’s, fundraisers, and all kinds of other places. These are great to keep on hand for the casual wear or the gym, but these shirts take up space in drawers and the ones on the bottom of the stack always end up forgotten. Not anymore! 

When implementing this tip, take all of the shirts out of the drawer. You may want to take the opportunity to wash them all while they are out and wipe down the drawer (or drawers) they were stored in. When you are ready to put the shirts back into the dresser drawer, try folding them in this new way for optimal space saving: lay the shirt flat and front side down, fold it in half matching up the sleeves, fold the sleeves over top of the rest of the shirt so it now forms a large rectangle, from the bottom of the shirt fold in half, again from the bottom fold the shirt in half so it is now forms a small rectangle. 

Here is the best part and the most crucial: rather than stacking the newly folded shirt in the drawer laying it on its largest surface area, lean it up against the drawer front (or back) with the fold facing up. Continue this process with the remainder of shirts so they are stored like files in a filing cabinet rather than a stack. While starting out, you may need to lean the shirts a little to get them to stay fold side up until you have enough shirts to keep them in place. 

Storing shirts like this not only saves space, but makes all of the shirts visible and you should be able to see which shirt is which by the folds facing up. 

I started folding t-shirts like this a few years ago and cannot tell you how easy it was to remember how to fold the shirts and store the shirts like files. Ultimately this trick has saved so much space in my dresser that I ended up freeing up a whole drawer, and now store leggings and pajama pants the same way using similar folding techniques. Once you fold the t-shirts this way a time or two, you will remember it easily. Try teaching your kids or try it out in your own dresser! 

Happy organizing!

Lyndsey Tym, owner of Simple Spaces, desires to help others declutter and simplify in their homes to free up time for the things they love. Learn more at facebook.com/simplespaceslyndseytym.