purging closets

On a recent trip to my sister-in-law's house, she confessed the she had recently found her whole house cluttered with excess stuff and had been cleaning it out. While I didn't notice any of her clutter, her comment sent me back to my own house with a fresh pair of eyes. In our house, we are fortunate to have lots of great closet space. But with my new eyes, I could see that even all of that great space was now filling with our own excess.

So, this week I started in on Ethan's closet. I loaded up a storage bin with baby hooded towels, a baby carrier, clothes, a freebie diaper bag from the hospital, and some baby blankets. I also filled a trash bag with old burp cloths, tiny socks, broken wipes cases, even an old smoke alarm that had been replaced long ago.

My next stop was making my way through the girls closets. Their closets are a bit trickier and require more thought and organization. I am saving some of Avery's outgrown things for Hannah and I am saving some of Hannah's outgrown things for a friend. So, I took a deep breath and started making piles, piles of things to keep, piles of things to donate and piles of things to trash. At the end, I had another storage bin filled with clothes to donate, one to send on to our friends, and one bound for the attic.

This morning Jeff and I tackled our own closets, the coat closet and our big storage closet under the stairs. Together, we filled a large trashbag of clothes to donate, threw out stained and torn things, gathered up old shoes and even put aside two shoeboxes of old receipts bound for the shredder.

Now, the question is where did all of this stuff come from? It's mostly a rhetorical question since I pretty much know exactly where each and every little thing in my house came from. But, when you put off purging and organizing for a long time and just keep stuffing the closets, it all adds up. Like 9 Easter baskets worth, adds up. The good news is that now that we've finished our closet purging, I feel so much better...lighter somehow even. I love the fact that I can walk the length of our closet under the stairs now, its a really good feeling!

Next on my list? Filtering through all the toys before Santa comes...