My birthday was recent, and I told my husband that I wanted to go on a “shopping spree” to the Goodwill. Where I live, every other Saturday is half-off day, which means you can get a whole new wardrobe for $30 (or as my husband says, buy the entire store for $150! lol). I was mainly looking for long skirts, which are so hard to come by these days in the world of mini-skirts. I was blessed to find four and some modest shirts. With these new additions to my closet, I took the opportunity to get rid of other clothes that I no longer wore…very much an “out with the old, in with the new” type situation.
If you’re like me, hanging on to certain clothes because of fond memories or because it’s a you-might-need-this-someday shirt, getting rid of clothes can be difficult. Having recently made room in my closet, let me just tell you that it is liberating and freeing to rid yourself of the clothes you know you have not worn in 4-6 months. I also took the time to get rid of shoes that I didn’t wear on a regular basis and reorganize my closet and dresser to make more room.
One thing that I have found that has helped me in the past to getting rid of these “extra” clothes, is going ahead and taking the clothes out of my closet, putting them in a trash bag, and setting the trash bag out of sight for a few months. If I haven’t had the desire for anything in the trash bag during that time, then I know I can do without those clothes. What I do end up deciding I need, I keep for another season. With all the clothes that I clean out, I first like to pass them on to friends who are my size to see if they could use anything that I no longer can. Then whatever they don’t find a use for, I end up donating back to the Goodwill. And the cycle continues…
Before I was a Christian, I was very much a pack rat, hanging on to things I never used anymore and just accumulated a lot of stuff. Since coming to Christ and having my worldview change in regards to possessions, I throw out a lot more useless things from my life. Sometimes to a fault, as my husband will often ask me for things and that I’ve thrown out. But I find that my life is much less cluttered. And I know that when my home is clutter free, my mind is also worry free and it allows me to focus more on the Lord.
Tips to make your closet better organized:
1. Get rid of clothes and shoes you know haven’t worn in the last 4-6 months. Let’s face it, if you haven’t worn it in that amount of time, chances are you won’t be wearing it anytime soon!
2. Gather these items up in boxes or trash bags and if you need to, set aside for a month or two (just to make sure you don’t need them!). In the meantime see if there is someone in need who is your same size and offer them first dibs before taking the clothes to the Goodwill.
3. While your closet is less full, take the time to reorganize. I like to have fall clothes on one side and summer on the other, separated by my skirts. Then I organize by color and what I wear most often towards the center of my closet. I also cleaned out some of my dresser drawers. I freed up a drawer and more space in my closet by folding up all my old t-shirts from college and the school that I taught at and keeping them in the dresser.
4. With my shoes cleaned out, I took the time to reorganize the way I keep my shoes in the closet. I bought those wire shelves that you can stack on top of each other from WalMart and used them to organize my shoes. Now I am able to have all my shoes in one place in the corner of my closet rather than all over the floor. With one exception, I keep a pair of flip-flops out for easy access.
I feel like I have a new closet, both because of the new clothes I was blessed with getting and because it is all freshly organized. I encourage any woman to periodically go through a purging session with your closet and reorganize it and see if that doesn’t lift your spirits!
{Pile of clothes photo credit}
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