I am so very happy! For weeks now I’ve been thinking of organizing my closet, tossing out things that I have not worn in a long time (I am talking years!) and moving around items so that they are easier to get to.
It’s been a long time since I’ve purged things, and I really need to be in the right mood to tackle a project like this. Are you the same way?
After my shower Sunday morning I decided to put away the leftovers from an overnight trip from the suitcase. That led me to adjust some of my jeans that were not hanging nicely in the closet. Which then led me to move my summer t-shirts to the top of the closet and bring down my long sleeve tops because we had snow flurries last week in Michigan so I am 99% sure I won’t be sporting t-shirts any more.
At that point I realized I may just as well take the time to finally organize the closet. Yes, it was time.
To give you a little idea about the area I am talking about, our house used to have a sauna off the master bedroom. When we bought the house we realized we wouldn’t use the sauna all that often but we would use a walk in closet every day. We decided to turn the 10 x 8 room into a walk in closet. I love having all that room, but it is really easy to fill that space up with “stuff”.
I started with my dress clothes, which to be honest I don’t use very often at all since leaving my “real world” job over 9 nears ago. Yes, I still had things in the closet from when I used to work outside of the home. 90% of those items went to the discard pile today. I know how to bargain shop really well and if I happen to need a variety of dress clothes, I know I can buy new pieces. As I moved to the Summer clothes I thought about each pair of capri pants and each skirt as I touched it; anything I had not worn this year went to the discard pile. I swapped out where I hang my jeans and leggings with my pajamas (yes, I hang my pajamas) making the jeans and leggings easier to see.
I even color coded the hangers for my jeans, hanging my work jeans on green hangers (work = money = green).
I ditched a couple of pairs of jeans that I used for painting and gardening because I know that a pair or two of my current work jeans will soon be downgraded to this lower level of usefulness! I went through my painting/gardening t-shirts too and tossed out 10 gross t-shirts that were so badly paint splattered or full of hair dye that they were just nasty. Seriously, I only “need” one or two grubby t-shirts for project days.
What a great feeling it was as things started to take shape and I freed up space on the shelves and the closet rods. I also organized my abundance of hangers and moved many of the extras into another closet for storage. That alone freed up room 0n the closet’s poles. No longer are my pieces of clothing crammed together. I have room to browse what I have left, making it easy to pull together an outfit and to wear pieces that I’ve been overlooking.
After tackling the shelves and the hanging items I moved onto some plastic drawer units that I keep my tights, nylons and bras in. Many of you know I am a breast cancer survivor and have had a double mastectomy as well as reconstructive surgery with complications. Due to that, I don’t wear normal bras. I did get rid of all of those last year but for some reason I had kept all the post operative bras from my surgeries. Why? They are definitely not something that I will wear again so why in the world was I hanging on to them? I had 12 of these garments. 12! That is just nuts, and now those too are no longer living in my closet.
In the end, aside from the pieces that went to the trash, I have 4 black garbage bags of clothes for our annual rummage sale.
What a great feeling to have a clutter free closet again!
When is the last time you really cleaned, organized and purged your closet?
