Decreasing "Stuff" Eases Organization

One of the goals I have for this new year is to pare down the amount of "things" in our home. I'm extremely thankful for each and every blessing we have been given, but at the same time, I'm acutely aware that we don't come close to needing all of the things in our house. And all of those things can lead to clutter, messes, and frustration. One of the items on my January cleaning calendar is to go through and purge the main closets in the house. I decided to start with my own closet since it gives me the biggest headache.

I have a summer and a winter wardrobe since our seasons vary so greatly in Michigan. I also have attempted to divide each season into a work and a leisure wardrobe, as my dress code at work is business professional which doesn't translate easily into weekend wear (for me anyway). But it doesn't take long for my work clothes to get in a pile with weekend clothes and before I know it, my closet is stuffed full and it's impossible to find anything. When I do find something to wear, it's usually a wrinkled mess from being stuffed so tight in the closet. 

Once I decided to tackle my mess of a closet, I began doing some research online about minimizing a wardrobe and living with less. It's my hope and intention to put in a better closet organization system when we get around to re-modeling our master bedroom. But between now and then, I need a solution. I figured the less I have, the easier it will be to organize. 

I stumbled upon an internet phenomenon called Project 333. I encourage you to visit this website if you are interested in learning more about this idea. The basic premise is that you choose 33 items to create a wardrobe for 3 months at a time. At the end of those 3 months, you can select 33 different items or add and subtract as necessary. Your 33 items include clothing, accessories, jewelry, outerwear and shoes. They don't include your wedding ring (or other sentimental jewelry you wear everyday), underwear, sleep wear, at home lounge wear, and workout clothes. Ideally, at the end of 4 cycles (12 months) it should be clear what items you'd like to keep and what items you can certainly do without. I decided to accept the challenge and I'm choosing to share with you the first step in my process.

So, to get started, here are some photos of my closet before I started.

You can see that the items hanging on hangers are stuffed pretty tightly together. The items stacked in the hanging system are messy and falling out. There are items piled on the top shelves and items that need some sort of repair on the floor. 

To get started, I emptied everything out of the closet.

I followed the guidelines on the Project 333 website to sort out all of my clothing items. The idea is to create four piles. Pile 1 consists of the items you love. Pile 2 are things you want to keep but may not be sure why you want to keep them. Pile 3 is items that don't fit TODAY or items that you don't like. These items should get donated ASAP. And Pile 4 are items in bad condition that should be trashed. I didn't have any items in Pile 4. My items in need of repair only need a button or a tiny hole patched up, so it wasn't worth it to me to trash them. Here is how my piles looked when I was done sorting.

Then came the extra hard part. I started with my love pile and divided it between work and weekend clothes. Then I narrowed it down to the bare necessities in each category. I ended up with four pairs of pants, two skirts, four blazers, three sweaters, six dress shirts, six blouses, and three dresses. This was HARD. The remaining items got moved to pile #2. That totaled 28 items already. I began feeling stressed about having only 5 spots left for outerwear, accessories, jewelry and shoes. 

The Project 333 website mentions several times that this is not a project of suffering, and I kept reminding myself of that. My main goal was to pare down - not to punish myself. So I chose five pairs of shoes - a black pair, a brown pair, brown boots, black boots, and a pair of flats. I considered my running shoes a workout item so I didn't count those. So my clothes and my shoes got me to 33. 

I bent the rules a touch and added five accessories and five pieces of jewelry, bringing me to 43 items total. I also decided to leave outerwear out of the picture for now. Outerwear isn't an overwhelming area for me that needs to be pared down right now, so I left it alone. All in all, 43 items to last me three months. The state of my closet? See for yourself!

Each item has plenty of room to hang. It's easy for me to see what I have and plan a week's worth of outfits without stressing too much. While I'm a bit nervous about making it on these 43 items alone, I felt really excited about the challenge as I started my work week this week. I will keep reminding myself that this isn't a project of suffering, and, in the worse case scenario, if I need to go find something to switch out or add, all of my Pile #2 clothes are boxed up in the spare bedroom closet. I should have taken a picture of that to share with you - yikes! But the idea that in a few months to a year I will be able to confidently purge a lot of that clothing excites me too. 

Again, I highly encourage you to check out the Project 333 page. You can learn more about the project, read success stories, get support, and get inspired to pare down your own wardrobe in the name of organizing this New Year!

Happy purging!