clean my closet

...to update this goal when I do something relevant to it while working on my overall decluttering goal.

• Reconfigured the stuff stored on the floors of both the coat closet and my clothes closet
• Rearranged part of the ensuite storage closet
• Switched some occasional-use items from prime closet space to the storage closet

• Transferred my heavy winter outerwear from the coat closet to the freestanding wardrobe that recently migrated to my bedroom from my dining room, where it had been used to store office supplies and boxes of papers left over from my big office downsizing during the summer of 2007. (The office supplies are still on the wardrobe’s shelves for now, but the boxes are in my dining room, where I plan to sort through over the next couple of weeks.)
• Move my suitcase full of foldable off-season stuff into the bottom of the wardrobe, below the coats.

It’s nice having more space in the coat closet for the light sweaters and blazers I use on cool summer mornings and evenings.

And this morning, when I needed an extension cord, I was pleased that I knew exactly where my spares were located in the storage closet, and could get at them without too much trouble.

• Purge and reorganize top shelf of bedroom closet
• Reorganize linen closet
• Continue organizing ensuite storage closet so that I have easy access to everything that’s in there, and get rid of anything I come across that I don’t need or use
• Purge other half of freestanding wardrobe (which is fitted with shelves), and decide on best use of that space

I just finished organizing my pink clothes. And it’s just one color. Many more colors to go.

I finally unpacked my suitcase. It’s been three weeks since I arrived home.

I’m sick today, home from school.
I’ve decided I’m going to crank up the tunes, get a trash bag for trash, my laundry basket for clothes stashed away in the mess, and a few boxes labeled, “Keep” and “Donate”.

Wish me luck!

Yesterday, prior to leaving the house to run errands, I filled a box wtih items from my closet. Filled up a XZerox paper box, but still LOTS left in my closet, so much that you can’t even tell I took anything out!
Anyway, dropped them off at Goodwill. Next weekend: MORE!

Cleaned out my room and closet, got rid of 3 gargage bags and a box full of stuff! Feels good to have the space clean, neat and decluttered!

to see all my shoes. WOW i have a lot of shoes…there must be some kind of syndrome. Shoes always fit!

And miraculously, everything fits either inside the closet or on the open hooks closer to the front door.

Best find (from going through each item’s pockets before hanging it up again): the credit card I misplaced yesterday. (Didn’t cancel it because I knew it was here somewhere.)

• Finish considering best place to store occasional-use items (see previous entry)
• Organize footwear
• Purge and reorganize top shelf of this closet
• Purge and reorganize top shelf of bedroom closet
• Reorganize linen closet
• Tackle ensuite storage closet

OK, I’m taking a short break, so I thought I’d update this goal. (I’ve been warming up to this task under the get rid of all my clutter goal.) Finally started it today, after a late lunch.

• Took every garment off the rack
• Sorted garments into several categories: heavy winter coats and jackets, lightweight coats and jackets (suitable for spring or fall), and sweaters/fleeces/flannel shirts (most of which also fall into the previous category, but which I often wear indoors as well – e.g., in overly air-conditioned offices and restaurants)
• Removed all the plastic shopping bags that had somehow made their way into the closet, and set them near the door (to be dropped off to the neighbours who adopted my dog last spring: dog owners are always in dire need of stoop-and-scoop bags)

• Remove all garments from the three coat hooks that live behind my apartment door (outside the coat closet) and sort them into the appropriate categories
• Put back into coat closet (with 3 “overflow” garments – those I’m currently using a lot – allowed on the outside-the-closet hooks) only those items that fit and flatter me and that I love; if closet becomes too crowded, pare down as necessary
• Straighten up top shelf (which isn’t in terrible shape)
• Consider whether shoes, recycling bins, out-of-season handbags, and occasional-use items (e.g., dance bag, backpack, duffle bags) are best stored here or elsewhere; move as necessary

As a last bow to Poetry Month, I had an impulse to unearth the only poems I’ve ever had “published.” (In my teens, I wrote reams of the stuff, working out all that adolescent angst. The last time I committed a poem to paper was 1983. I now “write” poetry with one of those fridge-magnet kits, and I haven’t been recording those efforts for posterity.)

I thought the yearbooks might have been stashed in the IKEA wardrobe that’s currently occupying one corner of my dining room. Access to that cupboard, though, was blocked by two Rubbermaid bins and a rocking chair that had gotten buried behind them.

Rather than just shove the bins out of the way, I decided to empty them. So I flipped on my decluttering playlist and set to work.

An hour later, here’s what I’ve painlessly accomplished:

• Emptied Bin 1, which contained miscellany that I’d cleared out of a dresser drawer last summer while organizing my home office and reclaiming my bedroom and just never gotten around to relocating. Put stuff I no longer need or want into a “to donate” box, and moved the remaining batteries, matches, candles, and whatnot to one of the drawers in my makeshift dining-room “sideboard” – three small IKEA dressers lined up in a row.
• Emptied Bin 2, which contained the rest of my summer clothes. Along with some casual favourites, I scored more clothes suitable for the office: four dresses (including the one that I want to have a seamstress copy in multiple fabrics), three pairs of slacks (one pair of which will actually need to be taken in before I can them again, having been roomy even when I was 45 pounds heavier), and four nice tops. The mending pile by my couch acquired two more projects, and the “to donate” box grew by three or four items.
• While hanging up the work clothes item by item – after trying each on to make sure it fits and flatters – I seized the opportunity to gradually whittle away at the mound of stuff that had accumulated in front of the bedroom closet. One by one, as I went back and forth between Bin #2 (still in the dining room, because I’m not supposed to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds lest I herniate the ileostomy) and the closet, I distributed all of these items appropriately: the laundry hamper, the linen closet, the “to donate” pile, a newly created pile of borrowed items and/or books to return to friends (near the apartment’s front door, where I’m somewhat more likely to remember to grab a given item when heading out to visit those friends). Oh yeah, and I found my misplaced tape measure and $14 in the pocket of a pair of sweatpants that I frisked before tossing them into the laundry hamper.

• I was able to move my enormous wicker laundry hamper over there from its former spot near the bedroom’s entrance, where it had been convenient but a bit obtrusive.
• Moving the laundry hamper led to the rediscovery of a beautiful and practical bed tray that I’ve owned since 1980, but that had been stashed away pending resolution of the bed issue. I’ve now restored it to its rightful spot on my new bed. All that’s missing is someone to make me breakfast in bed. :-D
• Also stuck behind the laundry hamper where it couldn’t be seen and enjoyed was a giant silk sunflower in a floor vase. That’s now the only item in the bedroom’s entrance, where its cheery presence can precipitate frequent smiling.
• Moving the laundry hamper freed up a bit of wall space on that side of the room, allowing me to bring in a small plastic storage unit (one of those wheeled thingies with two deepish drawers and two shallow drawers) that had been languishing in the dining room since being emptied last summer. It’ll serve nicely to hold the office supplies and related paraphernalia that have hitherto been scattered on or near my corner computer stand, which itself doesn’t have much in the way of storage space. Eventually I’ll replace the plastic storage unit with something more attractive, but for now it’ll do just fine.
• Brought that rocking chair – a beloved antique that I haven’t treated with much respect in the past few years – in from the dining room and placed it in front of the closet. The throw pillow propped on this chair bears a message that I’m sure will be good for me to contemplate upon waking each morning and before going to bed each night: “In the end what matters is / How well did you live / How well did you love / How well did you learn to let go” (apparently the pillow’s manufacturers – or the quote’s originator, who isn’t attributed – decided to “let go” of punctuation, perhaps in a gesture of poetic licence and perhaps because that passage would be devilishly tricky to punctuate properly).
• Finally, I had a brainstorm for improving the placement of the bed by repurposing a small bookcase to form a makeshift headboard. The shelves face away from the bed, into my little rocking-chair nook; the top surface replaces my former temporary nightstand (a wooden TV tray that has insufficient room for the stuff I like to keep handy); and the back faces the head of the bed. I’ve draped a colourful sarong over the back to cover up the less-than-lovely particleboard. I won’t be able to sit up and lean against it – e.g., to read or write or eat that mythical breakfast in bed – but I’d long ago gotten out of that habit, since I haven’t had a genuine headboard since dinosaurs roamed the earth. The other advantage to the new arrangement is that my head and shoulders will no longer be right under the window, a position that has proven to be a bit drafty in the weeks since the bed was delivered. I’ll also now be able to lie on the bed and gaze at the sky and the oak trees. What’s more, there’s room at what has become the foot of the bed for my grandmother’s cedar chest, currently taking up space in the living room by pretending (not very successfully) to be an end table. A friend will be here tomorrow afternoon, and together I think she and I can move the cedar chest into that spot without strain if we use the old “stick towels under it and drag it” trick.

If I didn’t have a doctor’s appointment shortly, I’d probably continue. I’m itching to finish cleaning out the bedroom closet as described in my previous entry and/or to make some headway in some other spot. (The kitchen counters are crying to be cleared off, and I’m also keen to start organizing the drawers and surfaces of the dining-room “sideboard.”)

Perhaps it’s just as well to take a bit of a break, though. Otherwise people are liable to start asking, “Who are you and what have you done with our friend Tink?”

Think I’ll treat myself to dinner while I’m out, to celebrate taking a number of significant decluttering steps.