It has taken me a few weeks, but I have finally finished the project of cleaning and organizing our closet.  The way the house is set up, we only have one closet, but it is a rather large walk-in closet.  While walk-in closets are wonderful, there is a temptation to start just throwing things in the closet, and a temptation that we have and do succumb to.  When this happens, a walk-in closet can be a frightening place that harbors closet monsters.  Closet monsters hold one’s clothes hostage out of fear of opening the closet door and letting the monster out.  Or if one braves the closet, one must run the risk of injury when walking in as the monster grabs one’s feet and ankles!

Anyways, I finally summoned up the courage to take on the closet monster.  Rather than trying to tackle it all at once, I tried to do a least a little each day, and I did manage to do some on most days.  I am finding this an effective way to manage larger projects.  While I might get overwhelmed when I think of doing the entire closet, I find I can manage to muster the courage for small tasks.  Eventually, the small tasks come together, and one can see the end in sight.  At this point, I find that I start to have renewed energy, and then one day, I decide to just finish the task!

As a part of this project, I had to sort through my clothing.  Over the past couple of years, I have begun the process of changing how I dressed.  I am now to the point where I only wear dresses and skirts, and I no longer wear pants.  It took me a while, because I had to acquire enough dresses and skirts to manage.  We do not have much in the way of money right now, so I had to acquire these things slowly.  Happily, we have a plus size resale/consignment shop near our house, so this has made things a little more affordable.  Actually, aside from the affordability, I am finding it easier to find clothing in the style I am working towards at resale stores than I can at other stores.  The newer clothing often seems rather poorly made, in addition to the styles being rather unpleasant.  Some day, I hope to lose enough weight to fit into clothing at regular resale or antique stores, but for today, this store has been quite a blessing.

While I have been slowly acquiring skirts and dresses, I still had kept my pants.  I wondered if I might want to go back to them, so I did not want to cross the Rubicon just yet.  With the closet project underway, it was now time.  So, I took the plunge, and I removed the clothing I no longer wore from my closet!  In the midst of this, I also went through my dresser drawers and culled them in a similar fashion.  I took several bags to the Salvation Army dropbox, and I took the nicer clothing to the resale/consignment shop I talked about above to sell.  There are a few stray items that need to be ironed before they can go, but that is in process as well.

So, now I have a nice clean and organized closet, which I am rather excited about.  I can now retrieve my clothing without having to risk injury or invasion from the closet monster, and I have a place for my winter boots.

Maybe this will give me the courage for one of my next projects…tackling the much bigger and nastier back porch monster!