Organizing the Bedroom Closet

At the beginning of the year, I set a goal of finally paring down my closet after talking and thinking about it for months.   I had a closet-full of clothes that I didn’t necessarily like and most of the items didn’t fit properly.  I purchase a lot of my shirts from the thrift store and because I have a big bust, most of the shirts do not fit properly. (Our thrift store does not have dressing rooms.)

This is what my closet and armoire looked like January 28^th:

 

  

 

 

In my armoire, I kept a mish-mash of clothing including shirts that didn’t wrinkle (and even some that did!), jeans that I have been holding onto thinking that one day I would fit into them again, shorts I haven’t worn in over a year (because I don’t do shorts), and the bottom two drawers were pajamas I’ve accumulated over the past several years.  It was pure chaos, as you can tell from the picture.

After just 20 minutes of going through my clothes, this is what my armoire looked like:

 

Do you see that?!?  There are shelves in my armoire! 

The top shelf has a few books and miscellaneous items.  The middle left shelf has my comfy pants (3 pairs of black yoga capri and 1 pair of yoga pants) whereas the middle shelf right has 4 pairs of shorts, capri jeans and 3 pairs of jeans I wear often. I hesitated on purging the shorts.  My reasoning: Todd and I are going on a family trip to Aruba in a month and a half and even though I don’t like wearing shorts, it is warm in Aruba!  At this time, the shorts do not fit, but I am hoping that if I can lose some weight, I will be able to wear shorts on vacation.  If I am not able to, then they will be donated before we leave for vacation at the end of next month.

The bottom shelf is now housing 5 pairs of pants that I wear to work.  I had nothing else to put on this shelf and I am perfectly happy with that! 

 

In the top drawer that held half of my pajama stash now contains all of my patterned short-sleeved shirts (I wear these alone as well as under cardigans in the winter).  I even found two shirts I used to love (and still do) that got lost in the disarray - they are now part of my weekly rotation of work clothes.  The right side of the top drawer now holds my summer pajamas which consist of two pairs of cotton shorts and a spaghetti-strap cotton nightgown. 

 

The bottom drawer will hold two pairs of my favorite pajamas (one was in the wash this week and the other on a drying rack to dry at the time of this photo.)

The items in the closet weren’t difficult to sort through.  I decided that if I hadn’t worn it in the past 6 months, I donated it.  This is what was left (and a whole lot of empty hangers). 

 

 

I ended up getting rid of 8 - 9 pair of shoes.  Most of them were hand-me-downs or garage sale finds for less than $2.  A couple of them were really pretty shoes but I had to stuff paper in the toes so that they’d fit!  All of the shoes that I wear are now housed in a canvas shoe-rack organizer to the right in my closet with my knee-high boots and high-top sneakers on the floor in front.  The best part of the closet is that I can now fit my laundry basket in it again!

I will admit, I was stressed out thinking about going through my closet.  The project took me less than an hour to complete, and I just love that everything in my armoire and closet are items of clothing that I wear, and wear often.  I have even begun switching up my wardrobe because I know exactly what I’ve got!  It is like I just got done clothes shopping…without having to go to the store! 

As with most things I put off, I don’t know why I waited so long to do this.  It is great being able to get dressed in the morning and choose something that fits without the hassle of trying on more than one outfit.