My Week in the Closet

I spent my week cleaning out my closet.  A close friend of mine is hosting a Clever Container party for me and we are working on giving her some functional space in her closet before the party.  I was so excited by the pictures she sent me that I decided to rip out my closet for a good spring cleaning.  It was an eye opening experience.

This was totally an exercise in two areas of my life for me:  1) sharing the wealth we have been blessed with and 2) creating good functional space to solve a major problem in our emotional lives.

Sharing Our Wealth

Our children are interested in seeing the end of world hunger in their lifetime.  They are so moved by the problem that they opted out of birthday presents to collect donations for Action Against Hunger.  Essentially what they are asking is that the people of the world share their wealth with those that have much less.  When I thought about our clutter problem I realized that we were not sharing our wealth and it was all because I didn't want to take the time.

My husband and I went through our clothes and ridded ourselves of all of the clothes that:
1)  We didn't like the way they fit.
2)  Didn't fit (you know those clothes that we are going to fit into "some day").
3)  Couldn't remember the last time we wore.

This produced 5 LAWN SIZE black trash bags of clothes.  The kids helped us drag them into our garage and my husband promptly loaded them into the back of my van.  On his day off we took the clothes to donate and just like that we had accomplished simplifying our lives and sharing our wealth.

Creating Good Functional Space

My closet is enormous.  I have several friends that likely hate me for my master bedroom closet.  But because we are purging our clothing we don't take up all of the space.  Most of the space in our closet is wasted...until now.

I have 4 children and laundry is CONSTANTLY in process in my home.  Our bedroom tends to be my staging area to fold and hang clothes because my "laundry room" is only big enough to hold our washer and dryer.  My husband hates this.  In fact, he told me that by the end of the year he wanted our bedroom to be a place of relaxation rather than a laundry room.  He wants what I call a "zen den."

After I cleaned out our closet I had an entire "nook" that was unused.  I created an "in process" laundry area.  This is the place where our hamper lives, where I can put shirts that I need to hang when I haven't had time to do so yet and baskets of clean clothes that need to be folded.  I even have space that I can put a drying rack up to finish drying the waist bands of our jeans that, for whatever reason, never seem to get dry.

I have a totally happy husband right now because his "zen den" is one huge step closer to happening.

I was totally thrilled with myself until I talked to a friend who told me about all of the treasures (like gift cards and money) she found when she cleaned out her closet.  All I found were dust bunnies.  :o(

Maybe the hall closet contains better treasure???