The Great (Mostly Clothing) Purge: Part IV

The getting-rid-of-clothing part of our clutter reduction has been the longest, biggest, most difficult, process for me. I started it back in January when I redid the boys' room. I weeded clothes out of the closet and drawers, and finally organized their whole closet. Most of their unused toys were sold at our garage sale last fall, but I was also able to get rid of a couple games we hadn't played in years. Amazingly, the way I have the closet set up now is proving to be a success. It's still tidy and organized! This may also be partly due to the number of times I've lectured about the orderliness of their stuff; a few threats have been made.

Everything, and I mean everything, has its own spot. If it doesn't, it's gone.

I was also haunted by the state of our bedroom. I'm not joking when I say there was a path from the door, along the side of the bed, and the rest was stuff. The closet doors couldn't close. It was a lot like sleeping in a walk-in closet. When company came, projects or piles were moved into our room, out of sight. I'd get busy with something else, and never tackled the piles. After losing a lot of weight last year, I sorted out all my big clothes from drawers and closet to make room for smaller clothes. I was then paralyzed with indecision. Should I keep the big clothes because I spent so much money on them? What if we have another baby and I need bigger clothes for a while? And so clothing lay draped in piles, frozen in limbo as I contemplated this monumental riddle. I finally decided to keep some, get rid of most. It was an amazing feeling. Folks: I haven't seen the floor of our closet in four--yes, four years. While the whole process took over a month, I can finally breathe easy when I walk into our room now.

A couple dressers were rearranged to make room for the door to swing inward (why didn't I think of this before??), a new dresser that was a gift (THANK YOU!) was added for Eli's work clothes, and the cedar chest was moved into the empty space in the closet. No more piles of clothing in plain sight, no more boxes of picture frames and canning jars and books.

Ian ripped the vent off the wall and started throwing things down it, so that still needs to be fixed. And the blackout curtains are, indeed, taped to the trim. Eli needs as much dark as he can get to sleep well, especially during his 3rd shift weeks, and slivers of light coming through the sides have kept him awake.

I even KonMari-ed the heck out of a few drawers. (Minus the talking to clothes part, that is. And except for my socks... my socks do not like laying folded loosely, they are introverts who like being wrapped securely together for fear of getting lost. Which they almost never do.)

I do keep kids toys in my sock drawer...don't you? 😁

I finally came to terms with the realization that there was a basement full of storage totes to be dealt with. I started tackling them this week. My personality doesn't handle these decisions and clutter well; I've had a tightness in my chest the past few days that I hope doesn't mean anything other than stress. Twenty totes of boy clothes plus three heaping laundry baskets of clothes that had no home were hauled up the basement stairs (best workout I've had in a while), and two whole days were spent sorting, organizing, and counting how many pairs of everything we had.

Spare hangers! A great sign of progress.

I feel as though we're always short on pants with the knees intact...and somehow ended up with an incredible amount of 4T and 5T shorts. While our first two boys are the "untwins" and have pretty much been in the same sized clothing as each other for the past five years, I'm having to remind myself that we no longer need so many multiples of things for the little boys. Ian's height was recently measured in the 40th percentile, and weight in the 60th, so I'm fairly confident he and Liam will remain a good two sizes apart for a while.

All work and no play...you know how it goes. It was fun unearthing some things we forgot were even in storage. Poor Mojo. Not only did we find his winter coat, but also his little winter boots. When the boys tried putting them on him he went into hiding for a few hours.

After clothing was sorted through, there were the blanket totes to tackle...the hat/mitten tote...the coat tote...and four totes of home decor in the garage. We decided to get rid of an old pair of skis and the Pack 'n' Play. This was all on Day 3 (today).

In total, twelve storage totes were emptied, including three large 32 gallon totes. Six totes alone are eliminated boy clothes.

The finished garage sale pile now looms menacingly by the back door, waiting for me to begin the daunting task of pricing everything. I just can't wait until it's all gone.

For other posts in this series, see:

The Great Purge: Part I

The Great (Furniture) Purge: Part II

The (Not So) Great (Book) Purge: Part III