Project: Simplify – Hotspot #1

Yesterday, I managed to (pretty much) complete the first challenge of Project: Simplify which was to organise our wardrobes.  I was particularly pleased that this was the first area to tackle since our clothes were in a right old state since we moved in.  As you probably know, our parents moved us into our new house since I was a bit busy at the time having my daughter. This meant that we did not organise our clothes when we first moved in.  We bought a large wardrobe to go in the guest room since it was clear that we did not have enough hanging space but again, we were in such a state that we never really got organised.  Ricardo spent quite a few weeks in the guest room so that he could sleep uninterrupted during the week so his clothes were mainly in that room.

So first of all, here are the before photos.  No judgement please!

The first step was to tidy up the hanging space. I moved ricardo’s casual shirts to the guest room wardrobe and put all his work shirts and trousers in the wardrobe in our room – this makes sense since these are the things he needs daily.  I removed all the clothes from the shelving areas of both wardrobes and folded them neatly into piles on the bed: sweaters, big jumpers, night wear, sports wear, decorating wear (yeah, that’s a thing, apparently), polo shirts, smart jumpers, snow wear, shorts and jeans.

I cleaned out the wardrobe shelves with household cleaner and then divided up the areas (mentally!) for each of us.  I also emptied all the drawers of our two chest of drawers and added them to the piles.  I emptied out the shoe area and paired up the shoes.  All clothes that I wasn’t going to keep went in a big Ikea bag and all my maternity wear in another bag to go up in the loft for next time (fingers crossed!).

I still need to go through the big bag to split the clothes into charity shop donations, stuff to Ebay and stuff to throw away/recycle (fabric recycling does not care about the state of the clothes since they are shredded to make into bedding etc).

Then all that was needed was for the clothes to be put away.  I used a shopping bag to store all ricardo’s snowboarding accessories.  We still need to get some shoe racks so we can keep the shoes tidy and remember to wear all our different shoes! I have seen some cheap ones in Homebase.  Overall, I am really happy with the result and it amazing the impact this has in the morning for feeling like you are on top of things. Here are the after shots:

I even have some spare room in the guest room wardrobe for my crafting supplies!:

More photos here.

I am excited to get on with the next task which is paper clutter. I have already had one paper purge lately but I need to get a more attractive filing system so I can have it handy in the lounge.  That way I can file as I go along.  I might have to check John Lewis online as I have some vouchers to spend…