Something has gotten into me recently. I now hate chaos and mess. Not that I enjoyed them before, more that I put up with the small messes and clutter life inevitably creates. So today I woke up from a nap and started reading my book*. Here’s what it said “There’s a great line from the poet Anais Nin that reads: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” This is how it was for me… My journey started with my decision to make some serious changes.” I leapt out of bed remembering that I was determined to live a more beautiful life, and thus it was time to… clean out my closet!
Don’t laugh. Maybe it’s not world changing, but now that I have this little baby; I just have this uncontrollable urge to live a beautiful, gorgeous life- down to every detail. I don’t want to spend forever in the morning picking out something to wear. I don’t want to wear 5 outfits on repeat because my clothes are everywhere and I am too tired in the morning to hunt for them that actually work for me in this time in my life (this has never been truer than being up with a baby 3 times in a night- he is now sleeping much better, but the zombie feelings I had was legit). So I did it! I have also been reading “The life changing magic of tidying up”* and I have loved it! This is totally a must read and only $10 from Amazon. I used some of her principles and some of my own tried and true organizing tricks. The first one is to pull everything from one category onto the ground.
I have this beautiful closet that my husband built me and it fits a lot of stuff! But just because it fits everything, doesn’t mean I should keep the old nasty clothes I have been holding on to. Today I worked on my tops. The empty closet:
Besides my closet, I also store off season tops under my bed in storage bins. In the book, it really pushes you to not store off season clothes somewhere else because you will get too lazy and never change all of it over (guilty- there were still shorts in there even though it is August). And like I mentioned above, I want to spend my time with my family, not moving one season of clothes over. Something else to consider? Storing clothes in the bins under my bed makes the clothes stink! I am pretty relieved that I no longer have clothes hiding under there feeling lost and forgotten. Side bar, I did all of the organizing in one gloriously long nap my son took. Hallelujah! I took all of those off-season clothes out of the bins and dumped them on the floor too. 
I then went through every single item and did three things. 1. I asked if this item sparked joy (mock me, but it totally works) 2. I looked for damage- if it was just a string I clipped it off. If it was yellow armpits or major pilling, it was toast (TMI, gross, sorry!). 3. I made sure all of the hangers were facing the same way so as I flip through my closet I am looking at the front of the garment, not the back.
If each piece of clothing didn’t pass part one and two of the test, they went in the donate or sell pile. If they did, I fixed the hanger and put it in the keep pile. When I had gone through every top, I had gotten rid of 25 pieces of clothes!!!
My donate pile was huge and I enjoyed shoving it in the garage (now to get myself to Savers… I am so not perfect!) I put all of the clothes in the closet and organized them. In the book, she recommends hanging your heaviest items in the back of your closet so that it is physiologically lighter to walk into your closet (this also works since it is still 90 degree weather in Utah). So sweaters went in back and everything else went in front arranged in rainbow order. To finish off my project, I put the same spacing between each hanger because I am a freak and that is beautiful to me. Ha!
So now I have this beautiful closet and I can’t wait to conquer the rest of the closet. Oh, and life! Because if you can organize your closet, you can do anything! (here’s a selfie of my on the floor organizing- I live the glamorous life)
So how is it going? You know, now that I only have clothes I love? Pretty dang good! I went in to pick out clothes to wear for work tomorrow and it is quicker since I only have stuff that I love and fit and work in there. I’ve heard of lots of bloggers doing a Capsule project- I never read much about it, but maybe that is what I have done? A week before I did tops, I did my dresses. I had an obscene amount of dresses. The good news is that most of them were Anthropologie dresses that somewhat held value. I put a bunch of them up on eBay and have made $300 so far! The money will go towards paying off our last student loan so now I have only clothes I wear and money to achieve my dreams. Win win! Last side bar, but having a baby and having my body and life change so much in so little time probably were huge triggers to cleaning out my closet. I’ve had clothes I haven’t worn since I was pregnant and clothes I can’t wear now that I am breastfeeding. If I don’t really love them is there really a point to holding on to them until I can wear them again? Odds are they will be sad and tired by the time I can wear them (p.s. to listen to the BEST podcast episode about this, I strongly recommend this one…link to The Longest Shortest Time “The New You…It’ll Do”). Even if I wasn’t at this huge transition point, I still think only having what you love is life changing, but it was definitely fulfilling for me!
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