Spring Cleaning the Closet

This week I got bit by the Spring Cleaning bug and decided to clean out my closet. See all those clothes in the picture to the left? Those are all the clothes I'm getting rid of. Right now they are bagged up ready to go. It wound up being 4 garbage bags full. This weekend I will be dropping them off and they will be out of here along with some other assorted "stuff" we're getting rid of.

I try to go through our clothes twice a year, spring and fall. I just feel that it's easier to go through them when you're swapping clothes out of your closet anyway.

When the seasons change and I put new clothes in the closet, I go through and make sure that all the hangers are hanging up backwards. Then, throughout the rest of the season when I put clothes back after they've been worn and washed I put them back with the hangers hanging forwards. This way it's very easy to see what hasn't been worn by the end of the season. Anything that still has a backwards hanger at the end of the season gets donated or disposed of depending on the condition of the item.

I started the backwards hanger trick because hubby would never go through his clothes. It drove me crazy that he wouldn't go through his clothes even though I knew there were clothes in there that I had never seen him wear. By utilizing this trick I can tell if he's worn the item or not and get rid of the unworn items without even bothering him. At the end of the season I bag up the unworn items and get rid of them.

The backwards hanger method is useful for my own clothes too. It makes it obvious when I haven't worn something so I can avoid that whole, but I might wear it again argument. I have a firm rule: If it hasn't been worn in a year, it goes. The only time I let this rule slide was while I was pregnant and the first year after. After that anything that still didn't fit or hadn't been worn went. I had quite a few clothes that no longer fit and it was a bit depressing seeing them in my closet every morning while I was trying to decide what to wear. I finally came to the realization that when I finally lose the weight I deserve new clothes. So the old ones went. Now it's much easier to get dressed in the morning because I'm not looking through clothes that no longer fit.

I'm glad that I finally got my closet cleaned out. I'm always amazed at how good it feels to get rid of the items we no longer want or need.

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