{Purge}...to remove by cleansing

I admit it, I'm a purger.  My house isn't the cleanest around, but very rarely do you find a pile of unread mail, old papers from school or stacks of magazines.  If I don't need it, I'll toss it.  I love having garage sales and selling my used clothes on eBay.  Just don't go into my garage as it currently has become a "dumping ground" for everything that doesn't have a dedicated place in my house.  I can still park my car in there, so that's definitely a plus!

I spent a weekend cleaning out my closet a few weeks ago and I'm finally getting around to write about it.  I have a HUGE master closet and it's all mine!  All of that extra space can be a negative though as I tend to store things in there that really didn't belong.  Here is what my closet looked like before I started.  

 
I know, right?  It's a HOT mess.  To be honest, it mainly just needed a good cleaning up, but it also needed to be rearranged and more organized.  It had good bones, so I only needed to purchase a few new things to get started.  I bought a great basket, a set of pant hangers and a hanging shoe organizer.  I got all of this for less than $15 bucks.  Love Tuesday Morning!

My first step was to create piles on my bedroom floor...trash, donate and sell.  Isn't that what they taught us on all those hoarding shows?  I also had a pile of "it doesn't belong in my closet" stuff that quickly made it back to their correct home.  This process was super helpful and allowed me to quickly sort what needed to go.  These were my piles when I was done.  As you can see, I shop way too much at Loft to have that many bags for donations.

My plan of attack was to first remove all the clothes that I no longer wore to either donate or sell.  I've had really good luck selling my nicer clothes on eBay.  It's time consuming, but it's better than getting only $5.00 for something at a consignment store.  As you can see, I donated way more clothes than I plan on selling.  Unless it's in excellent condition, it goes into donate.  I also have to admit, my donate items looked pretty good to me!

I also decided to go through the dreaded underwear, sock and t-shirt drawers.  Most of those unwanted items ended up in the trash pile.  I can't believe how many white t-shirts I owned or single socks.  I also found a few bras that I know were from college and I'm happy to say they were way too small! :)

Once I got all the unwanted items out of the closet, it was time to organize.  I started with my shoes.  I'm so glad I hung onto those old shoe boxes as they came in handy for my out of season shoes and I didn't have to go out and buy anything.  I needed to store my summer shoes, so I made labels for all the boxes and stacked them on a higher shelf.  When it's time to store my winter shoes, I'll just turn the boxes around and make new labels.  I also used my larger cardboard boxes (the blue and white print) for other items like flip flops and summer purses.  I bought these boxes a few years ago from Ikea and they are the best things ever.  They make the top shelf of my closet look so organized. 

  
I found a great, hanging shoe organizer that I used for all my flats and then I neatly organized everything the rest of my shoes on the floor.  I do need to invest in some of those plastic boot inserts so they stay upright and keep their shape better.
 
Then it was onto the clothes.  I like to organize my shirts by sleeve length and try my best to keep them together by color, but that doesn't always work.  Sweaters have an area of their own as well as my workout clothes (aka lounge wear since I never work out).  I also put all my pants together - jeans separated from my dressier pants.  Then coats and dresses.  

Most of my folded clothing is also stored in my closet.  I've had a wire drawer unit for about 20 years and I love it.  The only clothing that I store in my bedroom dresser are my pajamas.  Everything else is in my closet and it makes getting dressed so much easier.  

One of my other closet loves is a rolling laundry cart with three canvas bags.  I use this daily to sort my dirty laundry into whites/colors/darks.  It makes laundry day so much easier and keeps my dirty clothes off the floor (most days).  

So here is the AFTER shot from my doorway.  There are more detailed photos coming, but this one gives you an overall view.  If you didn't catch it in the BEFORE shots, I had my wedding dress hanging in the back corner.  I could ever justify having my dress preserved as I knew my children would never wear it and it was also so dirty from having my wedding outside.  My dress is now in its final resting place inside one of those blue and white Ikea boxes.  May she rest in peace.  My granddaughters can get it out one day and play dress up.  I still needed to store some lamps I wasn't using as well as some art, but overall I'm pretty stoked with how it turned out.

Dresses, scarves and shoes are here.

So happy to have a place for my luggage.

My closet chest of drawers with the cute basket on top.

If you have an eye for detail, you may notice in the photo above the one place I can enjoy the view of my new closet the best.  I'm super proud of how it turned out and it pretty much looks the same a month later.  Take some time over this holiday break to tackle a project you may have been putting off and if you wear a size 8/10, let me know as I may have some clothes for you to buy as I still have not found time to list them on eBay.

If you need some help with an organizing project, let me know.

Thanks for reading,
Jennifer