I don’t live in a big place; which is good. Size helps me keep the “things” in my life in check. But it is spring and I get the urge like most people, to clean and update. I have done a lot of purging over the last couple of years and I would have thought, that I had purged enough. but my clothes told me a different story.

Almost every day I find myself staring at my closet wondering: what should I wear? Setting aside general mood, you might think I only have a handful of options but such is not the case. My closet was so tightly packed that it was hard to get clothes in and out. I dreaded everything being clean at once because I didn’t know if I would have enough hangers to hang the items.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing was the fact that I really only wore a handful of the clothes on a regular basis. 70% of my closet was just full of fillers. It became a constant source of discomfort for me. I really dreaded anything having to do with clothes.

While I don’t subscribe fully to the minimalist lifestyle; I do think it is necessary to declutter your outside life if you want to feel freer inside your body. So that thought and the dread, led me to articles on how best to go about cleaning out my closet like this easy to follow chart from Chasing Foxes. 

I took everything out of my closet and dresser drawers by dividing into piles. My pile for donation was HUGE, a substantial pile for clothes that could be sold and a pile of clothes that needed to be trashed. The result left me with more clothes than I thought I had. As I put things back in the closet, I expected to have only 6 shirts hanging up but I was amazed at how many clothes I was keeping that didn’t fall under any criteria for them to be withheld.

So I now have a decent closet full of clothes. All items are on individual hangers and extra hangers have been removed to the guest room. I have room to move the hangers around in my closet and am able to look at all items with ease. I even have a empty drawer in my dresser and I have no shoes stacked on top of each other.

I have breathing room and it feels great. Although, as I realized that I still have a lot of clothes, I have decided that any item left in my closet that isn’t worn in the next 6 months (outside of seasonal/formal) will be donated as well. I am a little addicted to creating more space.

But I might have to make room in my closet for something like this . . .