Roll, Don't 'File,' Clothes in Your Drawer

Photo: Africa Studio (Shutterstock)

We’re rapidly heading into spring cleaning season, which means disinfecting, organizing, and generally trying to overhaul the whole damn house. Before you tackle your dresser drawers, though, take a pause: Let’s do this right. There are loads of hacks out there advocating for various folding methods, but we have the correct answer (and it’s not what Marie Kondo told you to do).

You should roll your clothes

You should be rolling your clothes in your drawer for a number of reasons. According to Closets by Design (and now us), this is a great way to keep your clothes wrinkle-free, but it’s also an easy way to keep them all organized so you always know what you have available. Typically, this trick is associated with packing a suitcase—and we recommend it for that, too—but don’t stop there. It’s perfect for all your permanent drawers: When clothes are folded on top of one another, you can easily forget about the ones that have long been forgotten stuck on the bottom. They stay on the bottom because you just keep wearing the ones on top—and their wrinkles really set in.

With rolled clothes organized side by side, you can see all of your stuff in one quick glance. When you remove a roll from the top layer, the rolls around it adjust, keeping things visible.

Be cautious about “filing” your clothes

Another trendy method, popularized by Marie Kondo herself, is “filing” your clothing, which involves folding them thinly and then stacking them horizontally, rather than vertically. While this method gets a lot of hype, it has a few drawbacks. Namely, no matter how tightly you file the garments, they rely on the overall structure to stay upright; when you take out one shirt, you disrupt the whole gang. Eventually, you’ll be left with a mess and have to take them all out, refold them, and put them all back in. This could work for you if you want to periodically sort through your clothes to weed out possible donations, but if you just want to keep everything as is, you’re probably better off rolling—which produces fewer wrinkles than tightly folded and packed stacks, too.