I worked in retail for 6 years and spent 6000+ hours folding 1000s of garments – my fool-proof ‘air folding’ method tidies clothes into satisfying stacks in seconds

At the end of every retail shift for six years, I was faced with either a mountain of jumbled up sweaters or an entire shop wall of Levi’s to fold perfectly. This mammoth task was repetitive but taught me how to fold any item of clothing like a professional.

Afterwards, I’d look at that enormous table full of hundreds of neatly folded sweaters in Zara – the same one that had just 60 minutes earlier been pure chaos – or my wall of crisp, perfectly folded jeans and feel a deep sense of satisfaction.

Now, my 'air folding' closet organizing technique is one I still use every day in my home, and you too can also enjoy the same benefits in four simple and quick steps.

How to fold your clothes like a pro

To fold tops and sweaters

When I started my first Saturday job in retail, folding clothes to save space in the stock room, or for customer-ready shop floor displays, was not easy. But I closely watched more experienced retail colleagues create perfect, crisp, fast and uniform stacks and soon, I was doing the same.

Ben Soreff, professional organizer of House 2 Home Organizing says, 'Folding clothing is an essential life skill for storing certain clothing items. Shelves and cubes work well for folded clothing and drawers do not. Drawers work well when it doesn't matter what you are getting out, like socks, underwear, and swimsuits.'

These are the steps I still use to this day when folding my clothes. Scroll the gallery below for visuals of the folding steps outlined below:

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1. Hold your top in front of you at the shoulders and shake to even up the neck and hem lines. Then with your arms straight out, and your thumbs either side of the neck, curl your other fingers back. This folds the sleeves backwards, and leaves a one-inch strip of material visible either side of the neck.
2. Holding your fingers in place so the sleeves don’t untuck, lower the bottom section of your garment down onto the surface in front of you, so the front bottom hem, and the area of material that would cover your navel, are now touching the surface of the table (once you become adept at this method, you can tuck the top of the sweater under your chin in this step, and pull the bottom half up instead of folding the item down onto a surface).
3. Instead of carrying on and allowing the top front half of the item to touch the table, fold the top section back onto itself. This now ‘seals in’ the sleeves like a sleeve sandwich. If your closet shelves are deep, you can stop there.
4. However, if your shelves are not deep, or you would like to stack thick, folded tops for an aesthetically pleasing finish, fold it back once more.

Since you’re using the uniform measurement of an inch either side of the neck opening to size your stack, your tops, regardless of their size, will finish up in a uniform stack that’s the same width.

If your top is wide-necked, pick two central points of the neckline and fold back there as if it had a smaller neckline. This will allow it to easily line up in a stack with other designs.

My air folding method helps reduce the stress of visual clutter in open storage, such as shelves in your walk-in closet organization.

And, the reason this method works so well and quickly is because you do all the steps a clothes folding board, available at Walmart, does face down, just mostly in the air. It’ll take a bit of practice to nail but once you do it this way, you’ll never go back.

To fold jeans and trousers

Save hanging space by folding up jeans, trousers, sports leggings and leggings by air folding yours.

Pro organizer Ben Soreff adds, 'The next step to remember is that getting an article of clothing from the bottom of the stack is not without challenges, so think about that when putting them away, so things are not so packed in.'

Scroll the gallery for visuals of my air folding steps for trousers, as outlined below:

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1. Shake out the garment to allow the seams to fall into place evenly, then at the waist band, fold one side onto the other (in the air), bringing the front left hip to touch the front right hip.
2. Put your hand into the middle area where the tops of the legs meet, and pull out the pointy bit of material so it’s on the left side.
3. With your left hand, hold the folded waist bands together, and with your right hand, grab the bottom hems. Pull them up together to touch fully at the back of the grouped waist band. You now have a twice-folded garment (once horizontally, one vertically) that looks like just the neat thigh of a trouser leg.
4. Bring the knee up to the waistband and fold over a final time. You can now push the pointy seam inside your bundle for a narrower, rectangular bundle, or use that wider width to line up your trousers on top of each other.

The benefit of this folding method is that once you get the hang of it, it only takes seconds. Whilst organizing pro Ben says folding usually 'requires a surface in most cases like the bed or a table,' the great thing about my air folding technique is that it doesn’t need any surface area to fold your items once you've got the hang of it.

Ben adds, 'They make folding boards that assist the process but folding correctly takes time and may not be strictly necessary compared to a rough fold.'

Folding like a retail pro also makes clothing of varying sizes and lengths stack up uniformly, clearing visual clutter in your bedroom, closet, and any shelving you have.

The results of my air-folding method

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AFTER

AFTER

BEFORE

I folded seven pairs of jeans, two of which needed turning the right side out first and with varying sizes, fits and leg shapes including boot cut and skinny jeans. This took just 1 minute and 58 seconds and is pictured above.

I also folded a a stack of five tops of varied sizes, styles and lengths for a satisfyingly even stack, also pictured above (use the arrow to swipe through the image gallery). This pile of tops includes a hoodie, sweater, long sleeve, short-sleeve cropped t-shirts and a long-sleeve long-line top. It took 1 minute and 18 seconds and resulted in a satisfyingly even stack.

What to shop

If you're not getting on with any folding methods, these nifty products will help keep your clothes tidy. Folding boards, such as the Box Legend V3 folding board from Amazon may be handy, but it will take you longer per item to fold than my air folding method.

When folding might not be the right choice

I skip a lot of folding in my young daughter's closet and hang up her items instead. Ben adds, 'For children, and even some adults, folding is actually counterproductive. It may seem odd to hang t-shirts, but most children can't maintain folding, even a very messy fold, and everything is going to get pulled down when they go to grab an item.'

Instead, I've doubled my daughter's hanging space by adding tension rods from Amazon to give her accessible lower hanging rails and make use of the wasted vertical space in her wardrobe. It's one of the many alternative uses of tension rods around your home.

If you like your garments to look uniform and neat, I have another great sorting trick for you. I tried the Nate Berkus sock sorting hack and it’s kept my sock drawer effortlessly organized for months..