Tag Archives: organizing

How to Switch Out Your Seasonal Wardrobe

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , ,

Last month I alluded to my intended goal of switching out my summer clothes for my fall and winter clothes. Oh, the optimism in that post! I thought it would be easy and quick. But I forgot that I kept too many clothes last spring.

You see, I’ve tried to stick to keeping everything that’s out of season in two big plastic boxes. When I can’t fit everything in them, I have to get rid of a few things until I can. But apparently last spring I fell off the wagon and added a third box, made of cardboard and somewhat smaller, but a third box nonetheless.

I was not happy to discover this, and determined to stop this new habit in its tracks. As you know, I live in a small house. I can’t let my clothes clutter, or any other clutter for that matter, get out of control. So as the great Barney Fife would say, I have to “nip it in the bud!”

Here are the steps I used to get my wardrobe back under control:

  1. I pulled all the clean summer clothes out of my drawers and closet, making piles of like items, and leaving empty drawers. (Note that for the last few weeks, I’ve been washing all those summer items in preparation for packing them away, so the drawers were quite full.)
  2. I looked at each item and set aside those that I hardly wore or didn’t wear at all since spring (they’re usually found in the bottom of each drawer, where they eventually landed after I kept rejecting them.)
  3. Clearly they aren’t my favorites, so I made myself put some of them in the donation pile. (That’s hard for me to do because they’re still in good shape and I was raised to be very frugal.) I kept a few others in hopes that I will wear them next summer.
  4. I pulled the two large plastic boxes of fall and winter clothes out of my closet. This is when I was dismayed to find that third box, tucked behind them.
  5. I pulled out each item and assigned it to a pile: the pile of tops and sweaters I expect to wear this winter, the pile of slacks I expect to wear this winter, and a small pile of warm nightgowns and pajamas.
  6. There were still quite a few pieces of clothing left over. Some are either too small or too big but I like them, and will wear them when they fit, so I kept them. But I eliminated three pairs of slacks from the 90s (the brown, green and navy versions of the same style) that are very well made but quite wide in the thighs and legs, which was the style back then. I wore them once or twice last winter and they fit, but I felt silly in them. I think it’s time I finally move them along. I also gave up several tops that I just don’t wear anymore.
  7. I set aside four items that no longer fit. They’re going into my sewing pile. Two are too large and I’m going to try to make them smaller. The other two are 90s full skirts that are tight in the waist, and too full and long; I’m thinking I could use their floral rayon fabric to make summer tops.

Then I put all of my summer clothes piles in the two boxes, and they fit perfectly. So now I don’t have to think about that until next spring. Given how long winter lasts here in the Midwest, spring is a long ways off!

Decluttering a Working Kitchen

By Claire Posted in Clutter, My Books, Personal, Small-House Living Tagged , , , ,

What do I mean by a “working kitchen”? You have a working kitchen if you cook. So many people these days eat in restaurants or pick up fast food even though they have a fully outfitted kitchen at home with all the latest appliances to impress their friends and their Instagram followers. That’s not a working kitchen. That’s a showplace that needs to be dusted occasionally.

But those of us who cook on a daily basis have working kitchens, and we have to work to keep them that way. We don’t leave the mail, backpacks or briefcases on kitchen counters because we need that space to work (and it’s not sanitary). We may or may not have the latest appliances, but we use our appliances regularly, so we can’t have anything blocking them. If we have knick-knacks or decorative pieces, they are up on shelves or on windowsills, not where we do our actual food prep. We cooks are a busy, picky bunch.

That said, as time passes, it’s very easy to allow clutter to creep into our kitchens if we’re not paying attention:

  • Someone buys us a hand mixer for a gift but we already have one we love; now we have two.
  • A child makes a large decorative platter for us at a ceramics studio and we add it to the stack of platters in a cupboard.  
  • An unsuccessful clothes-shopping trip is redeemed when we discover some cute, brightly colored spatulas and tongs in the clearance aisle. Not that we needed more, but they were irresistible.

Occurrences like these over several years can result in overstuffed cupboards and drawers that slow us down and frustrate us when we’re in the middle of making or baking something. Clearly, it’s time to declutter our kitchen.

In my e-book Secrets of Small-House Living, I describe how my family moved from a very large house with a huge kitchen to a much smaller house with a tiny kitchen. It was quite an adjustment; I had to give up a lot of kitchen equipment that I just couldn’t fit into the few cabinets we have.

Five years later, I’ve decided that our kitchen is actually quite efficient, despite its small size. Being u-shaped, it gives me everything I need within a few steps. The challenge is making sure that its small storage areas hold only what I need.

One person’s needed item is another person’s Goodwill donation, so what I share here may not fit with how you outfit your kitchen. But the principles are the same.

The Counters

An excerpt from my e-book:

But after my children left home, I had trouble cooking for fewer people. I thought I was going to have to retrain myself, so that I would stop doubling or tripling recipes. But since I’m blessed with a husband who actually likes eating the same thing two nights in a row, I finally realized that I could keep cooking in quantity, as long as I saved some for leftovers and froze the rest. (This meant more nights where I had a homemade, precooked dinner just waiting for us.) The same principle applied to baking: I could keep baking dozens of cookies as long as I froze most of them (left on the counter in a container, they would soon go stale, something that never happened when our children lived at home). So I felt like I’d found a solution to the question of cooking for an empty nest.

But when we downsized to our small house, my habit of cooking large became instantly constrained by our tiny kitchen. There was no place to set down my giant cookie sheets and casserole pans unless I kept the counters completely clear. …I didn’t want to give up my habit of cooking large, because it saves money and time (there’s the same amount of clean-up whether you make one dozen cookies or six dozen, after all.)

Keeping the counters clear is still the reigning principle in my little kitchen, because I need every square inch of counter I can get. Since we don’t have a dishwasher (there’s no room for one), we use part of the counter next to the sink for a drying rack. The microwave eats up a little more counter space. I must have what little is left so I can work. That’s why I regularly purge the counters of anything that isn’t essential.

This past Christmas, my husband gave me a small aquarium and some fish. The only place it could go is the far end of the kitchen counter. So before he set it up, I got rid of everything in that area. I had to make decisions about what needed to stay nearby, and what wasn’t essential. Several items went into drawers. My overflowing recipe box and clear recipe card holder had to be pared down; I filed many recipes that had stacked up there, and rewrote some on index cards so they could go in the box instead of being stacked on top. (These recipes were newspaper clippings or printouts from the Internet.)

There were some spare spice containers that were used often enough that I’d left them on the counter near the stove. I couldn’t fit them into the overflowing spice shelf in one cabinet so I’d left them on the counter. But they had to go, so I emptied out the entire spice shelf, pitched old spice containers (and some empty ones), and then neatly organized the remaining spices on a stacked shelf I found at the Goodwill for a few dollars. It really looks nice now, and no more spices on the counter by the stove:

Next time we’ll consider decluttering the cabinets.

Shrinking My Wardrobe

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , ,

Today I shrank my wardrobe by about 33%.

I’ve kept many clothes over the years, partly out of sentimentality, and partly because most older clothes are better-made out of better fabrics than the clothes I find in stores today. I’m sure people are sick of seeing me in the same old things, because I’ve been wearing some outfits for years!

I do buy the occasional “new” thing here and there, usually at a thrift store a half-hour from here. There are plenty of thrift stores in my own town, but I seem to have particular luck at the store that’s further away, sometimes even finding actual “new” clothes (they might have been new ten or 15 years ago) that still have the tags on them.

I’ve had a bit too much fun at that store in recent months; as a result, my wardrobe no longer fit in my closet. There were too many things hanging in there, and the two large plastic boxes I keep for out-of-season clothes would no longer close tight; they were way overstuffed.

I took everything out and sorted it into piles by type: tops, sweaters, slacks, jeans, etc. I also went through my dresser drawers and took out anything I hadn’t worn yet this season. I did all this sorting on my bed, which is positioned conveniently between the closet and the dresser.

The first part was the easy and fun part: I found all the socks with large holes in them and pitched them. Ditto for the underwear that I’d be embarrassed to be seen in if I ended up in the hospital.

Then I started making a pile for donations to the local Goodwill, where I can just drive up and they’ll take my stuff before I can change my mind. At first that was easy, too: tops that I haven’t worn in ages, pants that no longer hang right on me, the sweaters that are perfectly fine but that I have far too many of…the result was a nice-sized pile. Some of those items came from the thrift store, so I had little guilt about giving them up because the price I paid for them was a donation to the religious charity that runs the thrift store.

It helped that I’d been planning to go through my clothes for a few weeks, so I’d already begun thinking about which specific pieces of clothing I’d give up. Those items went straight into the pile; I guess I’d already mentally wrestled with them.

But there were plenty of items that I’d forgotten about, so I now had to make decisions about each of them. As a result, despite the decent-sized pile of donations, there were still far more items stacked on my bed than could fit into those two boxes. And so the hard part began.

When you’re sentimental, it’s so easy to find an argument for why you should keep something:

  • I’ve had this forever.
  • I’ve had some good times in this outfit.
  • This was a gift from someone I love.
  • This is one of the few colors that look good on me.
  • I wore this top when my kids were still at home.
  • I’ve always loved this brand.
  • My husband used to compliment me when I wore this.

Yes, I said all those things in my head, and more. Suddenly I grew tired of all the arguments. I began grabbing favorite items and stacking them in the plastic boxes that would be stored in my closet. Once the boxes were full, I put the rest of the clothes in the donation pile before I could change my mind. Then I bagged it all, put the bags in the trunk of the car and slammed the lid.

Back in the bedroom, peace reigned. Two boxes, flat on top instead of bulging, were put back in my closet. There was space between the clothes hanging there. My drawers had plenty in them, but were not overstuffed. Oh….it feels so good to be done with this task for a while!

In a week or two, when I think of some piece of clothing I used to wear, and I realize that I gave it away, I’ll probably feel bad for a second. But then I’ll remember that it served me well and that it was time to let it go. Believe it or not, that always makes me feel better, and then I can move on.

I wish I was one of those people who aren’t sentimental, and can swiftly grab up piles of clothes and get rid of them without a second thought. But that’s just not me, and I know I’m not alone.

(If you’re sentimental like me, you’re going to love my new book, The Sentimental Person’s Guide to Decluttering. Check it out HERE.)