The great clothing purge of 2013

My bedroom was out of control.  It always seems to be the one room that gets out of control (well, besides the office/junk room, but I am not brave enough to go in there yet...it's all about the baby steps for me).

Here is the real, actual before of one wall.

Pretty bad.  I don't think I could make it any worse unless I emptied the entire dresser on the floor.  All of the (somewhat) closed drawers are stuffed full, by the way, as well as the hamper, which is covered by clothing in this photo.  I am also ashamed to admit that I had also commandeered two big drawers in my son's dresser.  I don't know how I got so many clothes!  Those stinkin' elves keep bringing things into my house...

So, I decided to get started by placing three containers on my bed, one for donating and two for keeping.  One of the keeps is for "I love this and it will fit 10 pounds from now" and one was for "worn but not worn often or sentimental".   Anything that was more than 10 pounds away was going to be gotten rid of.

Please ignore the rest of the room and unmade bed.  I am begging you.

I started going throught the clothes.  And found these.

Yep.  Clothing with tags.  And a pack of underwear that had never been worn.  I will spare you the photo of the underwear.   With clothing, my new philosopy is  "use it or lose it".  I opened the underwear (got rid of a lot of old undies) and washed them along with the pink shirt.  The black pants got donated. What good are clothes that you don't wear?

Two hours later, I had this donate pile (the bag on the left held a huge comforter at one point, so it is pretty big).

I also had these two somewhat smaller keep (but store) piles. 

Above on the left is a small pile for the rag bag. 

If I am not in the slightly-too-tight clothes by Labor Day, they are getting donated.

Here is the after.  Not perfect, but better.  Baby steps.

I love being able to fit (most) of my clothes into my dresser.  But the best part happened about a week later.  My four-year-old was playing in his room, and I heard. " Mommy!  Mommy! Come here!  Your clothes are gone!"  He showed me where he had opened his dresser to reveal the newly empty drawers. 

I told him that I had given some of my clothes away and I didn't need those drawers anymore.  He asked me if he could put some of his stuff in there.  It was cute and sweet and heartbreaking at the same time.  My clutter habit had encroached onto his life and he was asking if it was okay to use his own dresser.

So, it felt great to be able to say "Sure, sweetie, put anything you want in there.  It's yours."

Bye for now!

July 2nd check in

Just checking in.  I have made some progress (and I have a couple of projects underway).

I have done a pretty good job not buying anything new.  I have a couple of new shirts, BUT  I got rid of 11 maternity clothing items, threw away 10 ratty underwear (didn't I just do that??), and have another 15 clothing items boxed up.   I think a summary of the "great dresser throwaway" will be my next post!

So, we are gardening this year.  Unfortunately, Peter Rabbit is using our garden as an all-you-can-eat buffet.  We have harvested exactly 6 tomatoes, and I don't think that we are going to get any peppers at all this year (Peter Rabbit likes things spicy).  Zero on the squash.  This is technically our fault, as we have a wood pile 40 feet from the garden that we have been meaning to burn.  I am sure that Peter is living there, so now I don't have the heart to just set fire to it.  Less produce makes me sad.