Liz Curtis, Age 29, Shorewood, Wisconsin

The Challenge: How to divide and organize a large wardrobe that must be kept in two small closets in different rooms.

The Solution: One closet holds what Liz calls the foundations of her wardrobe (suits, pants, skirts, and shoes); the other contains the accessories (tops, belts, scarves). Within each closet, she divides clothes by category (long sleeve, short sleeve, etc.), and she sorts by color within each section.

Why It Works: Liz, a single mother of a four-year-old son and a public-relations manager for the Kohler Company, a kitchen and bath supplier, needs her dressing routine to be fast and easy. She wears suits most days, and arranging them and the coordinating tops by color helps her find what she's looking for quickly. It also lets Liz shop more efficiently, because she can visualize a certain block of color in the closet and know whether she really needs, say, another pink sweater.

Why She Loves It: Her closet brings balance to her mornings, which would otherwise be a hectic time of day. "There is so much I can't control in other parts of my life that having order where I can helps me stay sane," she says. Liz's constant purging of items she no longer wears is another key to her sorting strategy: "It's so much easier to get dressed when you only have things that fit you to choose from."