Decluttering the Scary Closet

I recently looked in my closet - really looked. Have you looked in those things? They are scary!

Isn't it crazy how much stuff we tend to cram in those shelves, how clothes of various sizes tend to find themselves shoved up in the back of the other more stylish, newer pieces? Amongst clothing and accessories, I found old Nintendo systems, vacuumns, tennis rackets, magazines, electronics manuals, unfiled paperwork, printers - no wonder I could not seem to find anything in that zoo.

I decided to tackle the closet clutter monster once and for all.

I emptied each side of the closet and started from the top to the bottom. First, I organized purses and hats and placed them on the top shelves in cute wicker baskets. Then it was time for the tank tops. I arranged them via dressy or casual and light to darkest colors. Skirts, long sleeve blouses and casual tops were tackled next, then dresses, belts, scarves, jeans, slacks, hoodies, and sweatshirts. I removed all coats or anything remotely resembling the coat genre for relocating to the hall closet. This freed enough room in the closet for me to be able to find space between the hanging attire. Once everything was organized by style and color, I set aside any item that had seen better days or that I simply did not wear any longer. I dusted all of the shoe shelving and thinned out any pair of shoes that had clearly overworn heels or over mileage.

I made room for my vacumn and I can finally walk in my walk in closet again.

The next big project is going through the filing cabinet and shredding old paperwork. Having a shredder on hand helps to confront paper clutter head on in the moment so I hope this task to be quite a bit less daunting.

Next stop - Goodwill.