January Cure: Day 7 – Closet Cleanout

Finally! A terrifying prospect. I equally love and loathe a closet cleanout. Today’s challenge was to just spend 30 minutes cleaning out the closet and only (potentially) discard five items. Yet again, I knew I would choose the advanced version of the course. Look at my enthusiasm.

You see, I’ve spent the pandemic in a desperate internal clothing battle. My work wardrobe needs to be comfortable enough for home AND toddler-friendly. I also hate the idea of entirely giving up on dressing in ways that make me happy – especially when so many of the things that make me happy are currently inaccessible.

This put me in a weird mental space where I’ve been purchasing clothing that works for the pandemic, but also unwilling to ditch things I’m looking forward to using again once things go back to normal. My wardrobe is now a conflicted jumble – and it’s HUGE. Despite how hard I knew it would be, I also knew I’d be thrilled to GET IT DONE.

• The guidelines said spend 30 minutes on a closet cleanout – I spent two hours gutting my closet.
• Straighten up errant hangers and do some dusting turned into pulling out all my seasonal clothing and evaluating whether they should stay.
• Just put 5 things in the outbox? Well, I discarded 43 items and divided them into respective piles for donating or selling on Poshmark.

Here are some before and after photos. I’m not sure you’ll be able to really tell how dramatic the difference FEELS while standing in my closet, but it’s like the closet can breathe again. I’d also like to caveat that I only purged my clothing and shoes and left CJ’s alone.

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I got rid of a few pairs of shoes so that everything fits on the rack. I even purged some from my seasonal boxes.

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I only ditched about three shirts from this rack but I DID get rid of a couple hand bags, which was one of my goals from my list of home projects.

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From the above area, I only got rid of about 6 dresses. That was hard. I also mended my flapper dress and put it back where it belongs and folded and organized the pants and sweaters. I ditched about 4 belts I haven’t worn in years, but I still need to come up with a better solution.

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My row of shirts received the largest gutting, so while this does not look particularly more organized, there are at least a dozen fewer shirts and it feels GREAT. The results!

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My closet cleanout is not over – I still need to ditch more items and find some better organization – but this is a good start.