Monthly Archives: June 2021

More Room in My Closet

By Claire Posted in Clutter Tagged , , ,

Those stored clothes I mentioned last week have left the premises and I didn’t even know it. I had put them in the trunk for whenever I got to the Goodwill drive-up. But my husband was out grocery shopping and donated them so he’d have room in the trunk for the groceries. So those things are gone with the wind.

Boy, does that feel good! My two storage boxes of clothes are no longer bursting at the seams but have a bit of extra room in them. Hanging in my closet are some dresses I haven’t worn in years. I have begun wearing them even if I don’t go out anywhere. I finally remembered the adage “Use it or lose it!” Whatever I haven’t worn at the end of the summer will be headed to Goodwill for sure.

It’s been a while since I did a major clothing purge and I forgot how good that feels. Next up: the basement storage area, which is getting kind of crowded. Time to weed out things and move them along.

Repurposing Old Clothes for Grandkids

By Claire Posted in Clutter Tagged , ,

I just went through my stored clothes again and got rid of a lot. Some I had kept because they were made well out of high quality fabric, and that’s not the norm anymore. Then I had a thought. A while back I made myself a top out of very nice knit I had picked up on clearance at a fabric store. I wasn’t happy with how the top turned out, so I only wore it at home, not in public. Then I decided to alter the top but that didn’t really improve it. But that fabric was so darn nice! I hated to donate it or throw it out. So I made a pair of shorts out of it for one of my granddaughters. They turned out so cute! I was able to lay the pattern so that the top’s hem became the leg hem of the shorts, saving me some time.

That success led me to pull out some clothes that I don’t really wear anymore that are made of beautiful fabric. I think a bright pink seersucker caftan is going to become a little dress, and a beloved Lanz flannel nightgown with some worn spots can become a little nightie if I work around those worn spots. There were two Lands’ End t-shirts from at least 15 years ago that I haven’t worn in while; I’m thinking they’ll make nice sturdy leggings.

By repurposing my clothes, I don’t feel bad about letting go of some high quality things I don’t wear anymore. My gram would be proud of me. She invented repurposing back in the 1930s, I think, when she cut up coats given to her for her own use and turned them into coats for her four small children.

Memoirs of a Downsized Declutterer is here!

By Claire Posted in My Books Tagged ,

Now you know what I’ve been doing during the pandemic since I clearly haven’t been blogging. Memoirs of a Downsized Declutterer is the true story of why and how we had to sell our large paid-off home and find affordable housing in another state, all the while dragging our enormous amount of possessions with us because we didn’t have time to go through it all. There is a happy ending: we now live very happily with minimal clutter in a much smaller house than the one we gave up.

I hope you’ll enjoy this book, especially if you need to either downsize or declutter your life. If you need to do both, this book will encourage you that it can be done, and will show you how to do so. Just click HERE to get started.