The Master Closet: Before and After

I am waking up at odd hours of the night the last few nights and am not able to go back to sleep.  Last night I was up at 1:30 and couldn't sleep again until close to 4am.  This morning I woke up at 3:00 am and finally just got out of bed at 3:45 since I was wide awake.  I'm not thinking about anything in particular.  I think it must be my lack of exercise lately.  I'll be exercising this morning.  Hopefully that helps :-)

Since I'm up and it's too early to do anything because I might wake people, I figured I might as well post some more pictures.

First, I must thank Corri for this quote that I love:

"Seeking knowledge also can be an effective antidote to worldliness. We invest a great deal in the acquisition of stuff. Companies bombard us with slick, relentless propaganda as to why we must have their stuff, and we judge an individual’s
success by their stuff’s sheer quantity and supposed quality. I like stuff—I especially like the word stuff. But consumption never was creativity. It brings few lasting satisfactions and can bring burdensome debts. Stuff beyond
our basic needs does not liberate. Consider the overall investment of your time. You have to shop for stuff. You have to clean, maintain, and organize stuff. You lose stuff. You look for stuff. You polish stuff, secure it against theft, trip over it, recharge it, upgrade it, accessorize it, pack it, move it, unpack it, insure it, fix it, and eventually sell, trash, or bequeath it. Stuff has no use beyond this life, and it takes a lot from us." -Shawn Miller

I listened to the whole speech yesterday and it was very good (it's not about simplifying by the way - it's about knowledge, but really worth listening to). You can hear it here.

We finally had a stay-at-home day yesterday so I was able to resume my 6-month purge.  I decided to tackle my closet.  I really dreaded it and considered skipping it for several reason.  One is that I just got rid of a bunch of clothes 6 months ago and I didn't think there was that much in there to get rid of.  Also, I often stare at the clothes in my closet without having "anything to wear".  Third, it looked rather overwhelming despite all that.

I love reading in Little House on the Prairie how the children had their one everyday dress, a Sunday dress, and maybe one "second-best" dress for special occasions.  Of course, they had to make and wash all their own clothes by hand so laundry wasn't as "easy" as it is for me.  Unfortunatelly, when we started making things simpler to wash and make - we just used more of them - making clothes take just as much time as it did for them I think.

I sure wouldn't mind having three outfits!  Wouldn't that make things so simple?!  Sure, we might not smell very great by the end of the weekday (they also just bathed once a week - there wasn't time for such luxuries more often), but if we're all smelly we probably wouldn't even notice!  We should probably avoid extremes in clothing, though, and that would be rather extreme in our day I suppose, so I couldn't go quite that far.  I didn't go near that far actually.

Rock and I have never really been into thinking about fashion.  We try to look nice, but I mostly just buy clothes if I see a good bargain on something I wouldn't mind wearing.  I don't really enjoy shopping (unless I find some great deal) so I don't go very often.  So, I'm not sure why we still seem to accumulate clothes.  I guess for me, it's probably because I don't end up liking half of them very much after wearing them a couple times, but then they sit in my closet anyway because I just bought them and I'm sure I'll wear them again sometime...

When I went into my closet to take the "before" picture I wondered what in the world I was thinking.  Why would I show all these messy pictures of my home on the world-wide web?  I must be crazy, but it is rather motivating so I'll keep going - at least you'll see why I was feeling like there was starting to be too much to do.  I considered cleaning up a bit before the picture, but then, that wouldn't have been very honest right?

Here it is:

Now, keep in mind that Rock and I do not have a dresser (we don't have any bedroom furniture, actually, besides a boxspring, a mattress and a nightstand - we've never been able to find bedroom furniture that we both agree on.  I'm sure if we found something cheap that one of us really liked then we'd just get that, but the ones I like are pricey and I don't want to spend that much money if Rock doesn't like it and he feels the same way about the stuff he likes - so it's been 12 years and no bedroom furniture :-)  Obviously, it's not much of a priority anyway) so this is all of our clothes.  The top of the closet has exercise clothes, maternity clothes, winter gear, swimming stuff, Rock's bike things, medicine and a few miscellaneous items.

You can't see it in the above picture, but beween mine and Rock's clothes there are some shelves so I took a picture (I do fold the clothes when I put them in here, but they end up looking like they were just thrown in after anyone searches for anything):

There are also shelves at the corner of the closet so I took a picture of those as well:

 I know, I'm crazy to take pictures of such incriminating evidence.

At least it's much better now.  I threw out anything I hadn't worn in while and most things I hadn't seen Rock wear in a while.  We surely didn't need so many t-shirts so I got rid of a lot of those.  I also got rid of socks without matches and basically anything we don't use or need.

Here's what it looks like now:

 I'll be getting rid of the extra hangers, but I left them on for the picture so you could appreciate the amount of clothes we've given away in the last 6 months.  Those used to be all full.

The top of the closet now has:
Left bin - swimming gear
Black bag - maternity clothes
Corner bin - winter gear
Corner that you can't see - a small bin with what is left of our medicine (a lot of it was expired).

Here are the middle shelves:

Top to bottom: ironing stuff, Rock's exercise clothes, his t-shirts.

Corner shelf:

Top to  bottom: my exercise clothes, our shorts, my t-shirts/PJs,  under these shelves I've hung my jackets and sweaters.

The funny thing is that this morning, I didn't stare at my closet having "nothing to wear".  Even though there are less clothes - I only kept the ones I wear and now I don't have to sift through all the ones that I don't!  What a novel idea.  Rock thinks he could get rid of more.  I didn't dare get rid of too many of his clothes without his consent so there are still several in there that I don't see him wear.  I got rid of all I could from my side, but I think I could part with more in a couple of days.  We'll see.

It's really refreshing to have a closet filled with only things that we use!  I also love knowing exactly what is in each drawer and bin.  The drawers were starting to overflow and now there is plenty of room in each one.  I wanted to keep going through the house, but I stopped myself so I could spend some time with the kids.  I tend to get a little carried away sometimes once I get going.  I think I'll tackle the hallway closet and the boys' room next.