The Great Closet Clean-out 2012

My mom used to have this rule that when we got new clothes we had to get rid of the same amount of old clothes. As I recall, this rule didn't last into high school. Well, about a month ago I was thinking about my closets and what I have in them. Here they are:

And I was thinking about two things. First, that there are a lot of clothes in my closet that I never wear. Second, I was thinking about how in my apartment when I was in school, we had three closets in our bedrooms half the size of one of those in the picture above. With two people to a room, that meant we both got a closet and a half. And there were six drawers, three for each of us. And upon thinking about those two things, the thought came to my mind that it was definitely time to clean out my closet. (Hopefully, I'll eventually clean out my dresser too.) 

I had originally planned to do this last month after my shopping trip with Melissa. But a decision was made that would make a big change in my life, so I decided to wait until this month to do it. And yesterday was the day. I emptied all my clothes from my closet:

 put on Kyle XY on hulu, and got to it. As you can see in the picture above, my clothes are in piles of "types": camis/undershirts, nice shirts, grungy/pj shirts, slacks/skirts/dresses, and outerwear. This is how my closet in organized.

The first thing I did was go through every pile and decide one of three things about each item: keep, get rid of, not sure. I had two sacks for the get rid of decision, depending on whether or not the item was in good condition or not:

After I had made those decisions I went through my "not sure" piles. I tried on every item, and decided whether or not I still liked it, if it fit, or if it was in good enough condition to keep. Those that I decided to throw away, I then wondered if there was anything I could salvage from them. For example, these shirts:

I bought these shirts in high school, so about six years ago. I loved them and took good care of them (hand washing, which is a bummer). But in six years, things get worn. These shirts in particular were stretched out of shape and thinner than they had been before, which was pretty thin. The lace was still in good condition, being heartier stuff than the thin cotton of the rest of the shirt, so I set the shirts aside to pick the lace off of later. You never know when you might want some pretty lace! I also took buttons off shirt that was too worn to be given to DI.

After I went through the "not sure piles," I went through the "keep" piles and made sure that everything still fit, was modest, and was still in conjunction with my personal style. I gave away a few more things from those (one dress sadly because it had accidentally been put in the dryer and shrunk about 1 1/2 inches. 1 1/2 inches that couldn't afford to be shrunk.), then hung everything up in my closets.

Here are the hangers of everything I got rid of:

I even organized my closet by sleeve length and color (It won't last long, but hey, it's like that now!):

I do have a bit more room in my closets now, though I still use both of them. And I probably could get rid of more clothes, but I'm going to wait a little bit and then maybe revisit and get rid of some more. After seeing what I threw away, I was overcome with this urge to go shopping again because I felt like I have no clothes (which isn't true, but I think it was that I saw how little "work" clothes I have. Most of the clothes I do have I don't wear often since I wear a dress/skirt 6 days a week.). I'm trying to hold off on it (because of $$ and the fact that I might not have a job in 2 months), but with the new City Creek center just across the street from where I work, it's going to be hard!