Cleaning Out the Closets

One of the most anticipated events as you start to purge items from your house and clean out all of the different areas is cleaning out the closets. I love to go through all of my clothes at least once a year and get rid of anything that isn't serving me anymore. Garments that no longer fit, anything that maybe has gotten a hole in it or anything I haven’t worn in a very long time tend to find their way into this process.

When diving into this project, the first thing we’re going to do is clean out everything from an entire closet and just throw it on the bed or the floor. The idea behind this is to visually understand how many pieces of clothing you have in there! Even small closets, when piled up like this, will create a mountain of apparel. It helps your mind to see and understand that it’s probably too much.

From there, we're going to go through each garment, piece by piece. As Marie Kondo is now famous for saying, “Does it spark joy?” If the garment is one of your favorites and you get a lot of joy and use out of it, then keep it. If the next one makes you feel restricted or uncomfortable in it every time you wear it, it might be a good contender to purge.

When I do this, I make three distinct piles:

1. The first is a pile that we’re going to donate to charity. So these are items that are either off-trend or a little bit old, or something that I won't be able to sell online. Those will go either to the Salvation Army or to Goodwill after a cleaning in my washer and dryer.

2. Next, we have a pile of some items that are more trendy, name-brand or higher quality items that I think I can sell online. I'm going to send them first to be professionally cleaned, make sure they're pressed properly, and then we're going to list them on ebay, Poshmark or send them to ThreadUp.

3. The third pile is full of items that I need or want to keep. These items are important to honor a bit, as you just decided that they bring joy into your life! So maybe invest in some really good hangers before putting them back into your closet, or come up with a good way to organize them when hanging them back up.

So now that I have these three sections completed, the next step for me is to go to all the other closets in the house. If you are following Marie Kondo method, you would do the above process with every single stitch of clothing in the house. The pile would have been everything that you own, all done at one time.

I like to do it by room because it can feel a little bit daunting to have everything all together, and it is also much more time consuming to go through all of the closets together. I’d recommend doing her method only if you have a full day set aside for it, and be prepared to take breaks so you don’t get frustrated with the process.