Simple Makes Me Smile

I have been working on this particular project for a few weeks, doing a little bit each day and trying hard not to give up until it was completely done. This has been quite a large project for me to tackle considering the condition I am in and worse yet, the wreck my closet had become.

Now, before I reveal the extremely embarrassing before picture, I just want to give you a few good excuses as to why it looked so wretched. I am good with excuses, at least that’s what Huz always said.

First and foremost, if you can remember me telling you before, or if I haven’t told you yet, my house is OLD, very old. Over a hundred years old and closet space has always been an issue. It would seem that back in 1908 people didn’t have much of a need for closets, they probably only had the minimum essentials and didn’t require the real estate we people of the 21st century require.

Secondly, I shared my very small closet with Huz, who is a hoarder of sorts. No kidding. The man has well over a hundred shirts (of which he only wears twenty but refused to get rid of any.) I being a girl, who wears professional clothes Monday-Friday obviously needed the closet space also; especially considering that Huz took over the majority of the drawers in our dressers.

And then there was the issue of my shoe and bag collection. I kept most of my shoes in their original boxes and stacked them up at the top of the closet. This didn’t work at all though because the floor was quickly filled with my casual shoes, overnight bags and purses. Quite frankly, the floor was the biggest disaster.

Now that I have tried to prepare you for what you are about to see, I present to you (even though I am thoroughly ashamed) a before picture of my closet…

This is just stressful to look at, is it not? You can say it… It’s a flipping disaster!

Okay, so how did I get this trifling clutter under control?

The biggest and most effective thing I did was purge!

purge/pərj/

Verb: Rid (someone) of an unwanted feeling, memory, or condition, typically giving a sense of cathartic release.

I started with packing up (almost) all of Huz’s clothes. The articles that weren’t sent to him were packed up and put away, with the exception of some of his dress shirts. I figured I would let a few hang out in my closet, just for old times sake.

After that, I pulled down all of the shoe boxes and lined up the shoes against a wall in my room. I recycled the boxes and admired an empty shelf. Looking at my shoes for a few days made it easy for me to decide which ones I still loved and which ones had seen their glory days.

A week or two or three later, I decided I would get the biggest challenge done. I sat myself in front of the closet and begrudgingly pulled everything out.

It was at that point that I looked at the disaster in my room and immediately labeled myself insane.

No matter, I couldn’t leave it all out like that, so I started to make piles. I added the shoes that I found buried to my one’s still lined up, I made 3 piles of bags, 1 fall/winter, 1 spring/summer and one of overnights.

The next day, I repeated what I did with the first batch of shoes and then applied the same method with the bags. Then with Natalies help, I headed to Target to try to find some type of shoe storage. I wasn’t sure at this point what I was going to do with my bags yet but I figured I’d take baby steps and figure it out along the way.

I found a Closet Made put-it-together shelf and decided it would be good for the shoes. We brought it home and a few days later I assembled it. It was super simple and only took 10 about minutes. Once it was in my closet, I pulled out my measuring tape and was happy to discover that I could fit another one of these units and neatly store ALL of my shoes! The next week we went back to the store and bought another one; also, by that time I had figured out that I could put some bins on my shelf and hide my bags in there. Whoo hoo! I was finally on my way to simple!

After the second shoe storage shelf was put in, I packed my bags into my bins and put them on the shelf. Looking good!

Lastly, when I was feeling up to it, I decided to weed out the clothes that I had no intention of ever wearing again. When I first dropped a ton of  some weight, I gave most of my clothes away to a friend but I held onto a few things, though I’m not sure why. During the final purge I decided to pack them up and move on. I plan on taking them to my favorite consignment shop sometime in the next few weeks to put towards some new used clothes.

Ahh, empty hangers, I have a ton!

Here is a picture of what my closet looks like now that the project is finally complete.

Eventually, I’ll paint the door and utilize it a little bit better and get all matching fancy girl hangers but that will probably be on the 2012 list. I will also remove the rest of Huz’s clothes and buy some more for myself.

I am so happy with the difference and actually look forward to opening my closet door. It may have taken me a few weeks, but it was totally worth the wait!