Editing, organizing, and decluttering clothing is one of the responsibilities that comes with the blessing of abundance. I doubt my great-grandmothers had to give much time to this chore, but I have found the dressing and laundry parts of my days go much more smoothly if I spend about an hour every few months going through my clothes and removing what doesn’t work for me and sprucing up what I still love and use. It is one of those jobs I don’t have time not to do.
When my “donations box” starts overflowing, I know it is time to bag it up and move it out. It lives on the floor of my side of the master closet, and all of our family members add to it anything they no longer want or use.
The over-full donations box coincided nicely with chillier weather, which prompted me to pull out the “other season” box that lives under the donations box and retrieve some of my heavier clothing.
So, it is time to do some work in my side of the closet. I don’t have one of those too-awful-to-be-seen “before” shots — I go through my closet at least twice a year at the start of the warm and cool seasons and occasionally another time if I get new clothes, so it stays in pretty good shape, which is just what I want.
In My Kitchen, In My Life‘s best tip for keeping things under control: Know what you really wear! To find out, at the beginning of each new weather season turn all of your hangers “backward” on the closet rod. Each time you wear an item and hang it back up, you get to turn the rod back to the normal position. At the end of the season, notice the hangers that never got turned back. If you never wore it, why are you keeping it?
Done! More valuable to me than dramatic “before and after” contrast photos is that doing this little bit every few months allows me to enjoy my closet every day. It is a pleasure to choose what to wear when everything is accessible and manageable.
Here is what I edited — 2 skirts I didn’t wear all summer because they don’t fit right anymore, a couple of tops that are nearly worn out, and a couple of perfectly good tops in colors that are the same as some tops I just got that I like much better. The new ones have elbow-length sleeves, which are nicer for my middle-aged upper arms. I got them for an excellent price, so it was worth it to me to replace the ones you see here even though they are nearly new. The only bad thing would be if I kept both versions of each color, when I know I will reach for the longer sleeves every time. Instead, it is much better to let somebody else get the use of them, somebody with better-toned upper arms.
What seasonal jobs do you like to do at this time of year?
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