8 Things You Should Never Store in Your Bedroom Closet, According to Organizing Pros

Shoes

Yes, Carrie Bradshaw kept her shoes gloriously displayed on museum-quality shelves in her mammoth closet. (Seriously, that closet is bigger than my bedroom!) But a closet or shoe storage unit near the doorway is a better option, as that’s where you should be slipping your shoes on and off to avoid tracking dirt throughout your home. (And honestly—shoes do tend to smell, and you don’t want that happening in your closet!)

If you do have a massive shoe collection, Hord recommends at least keeping heavy-duty shoes like boots, along with shoes you wear often, near the entry, and reserve any bedroom closet shoe storage for special occasion or out-of-season shoes.

Handbags

The general rule: Place items where you’ll use them. And handbags, like shoes, are only really used when you’re going out. “Frequently used handbags, umbrellas, coats are some of the items that should be considered ‘grab-and-go’ at the front door, versus the closet where they will just create clutter,” says Jill Czarnik, founder of home organization company The Tribalist.

If your bag collection is too large for your entryway closet, opt to keep your daily-use bags there, and stash less-used items in the bedroom closet.

Outerwear and Accessories

Unless something has gone really, really wrong, you probably won’t be wearing your coats and jackets, or even accessories like mittens, hats, and scarves around your house. So stash them where you will use them—your entryway area, mudroom, or coat closet—and leave more space in your bedroom closet for everything else.

Food

Not so fun fact: Food attracts pests. And many of those pests, including mice and insects, are just as happy to nest in or eat your clothing, too—and they especially like natural fibers like cashmere. So keep food far away from your bedroom closet.

If you do need to keep some food in your closet, opt for canned goods, which won’t attract pests, or use airtight plastic containers.

Uncontained Beauty Products

If you haven’t had liquid beauty products like shampoos, lotions, and perfumes spill or break in your possession, consider yourself lucky. These can leave a massive mess in their wake—and can potentially damage the clothing that’s stored in your bedroom closet. Your best bet is to find bathroom storage space for these toiletries, whether in a linen closet, the medicine cabinet, or under-sink storage.

“If you do need to store backstock bathroom products in the closet that clothes live in, use proper containment to store the bathroom products in case there are any spills,” Hord says. That means leakproof bins made of plastic or another material that’ll keep any potential mess in check.

Dirty Laundry

Hampers do make sense in or near a closet space, as that’s where you’re putting on and taking off clothes. But Hord cautions against putting a hamper inside your closet if you don’t tend to empty it regularly or have a lot of exercise clothes or items that tend to get stinky fast.

To avoid making your bedroom closet smell a little funky, Hord has a few strategies. “You might want to consider getting a hamper with a lid to conceal some of the smell, wash your laundry more often, or move your hamper into more of an open space or the laundry room.”

A Jumble of Items

If you’re short on closet space in your house, your bedroom closet could end up becoming home to a whole bunch of things you probably won’t use in your bedroom—everything from a stash of board games to cleaning products to extra folding chairs.

If these items can’t find another home, Hord says there’s still a way to make it work. “Create ‘zones’ in your closet so that random items aren’t getting mixed up with your clean clothes.” That may mean using a bin at the bottom of your closet to house cleaning products, and using the top-of-the-closet shelving for board games.

Clothes You Don’t Wear

“Ironically, the big no-no is … well, clothes,” Czarnik says. That’s because a large amount of your bedroom closet real estate is dominated by items that don’t see the light of day very often—or at all. “In the U.S., we tend to wear clothes seven to 10 times before getting rid of them. By the law of averages, that means there are dozens of items in our closet we may have worn once or maybe have actually never worn.” 

So take a good, hard look at the clothing in your closet, and feel free to purge the “maybe I’ll wear this someday,” or “this doesn’t fit anymore, but maybe someday it will” stuff, Czarnik says. “Beyond taking up space, these pieces can often lead to unnecessary self-judgment and stress … this is a classic case of when subtracting becomes addition to our lives.”