Organizing Your Closets

The change in seasons is a great time to organize your closets. The stores are filled with new styles that you want now but I’d like to encourage you to clean out your closet first. You’ll need a couple of large bags, one for donations, one for trash.



Let’s begin:

Start at one end or the other but move methodically through the closet so as not to miss anything.
You can break this up into sections (maybe work one hour at a time) or tackle the whole closet at once (possibly 2-4 hours depending on the size and amount of clothing)
Use your bed as a sorting area. Create 3 piles: Keep, donate, undecided.
Sort the section by section putting the clothes in these 3 piles. Once everything is out, try on the undecideds.

Keep this in mind when deciding what to keep or donate:

Keep only what fits now.
Keep only what you wear now. (that means in this past year)
Keep only what makes you feel Great.
Keep what others have complimented you on.

Do NOT keep

Extra sizes for “just in case”
Maternity clothes that are years old
Clothes that were specific to a job that you no longer wear.
Anything that needs repair especially if it’s been in need of repair for more than a year. If you really liked it, you would have taken care of that by now.
Anything that you have not worn in 2 years.
Anything that is not comfortable, especially shoes.

You may keep that one good outfit that you need on special occasions but that you may only wear once or twice a year. But it should fit, be in good wearable condition, and be flattering on you.

Now bag up all those items that are damaged and not worthy to donate. Take that to the trash.
Bag up all those items to donate. I’ll give you some suggestions on places to donate at the end of the article.

Put your clothes away in an orderly fashion. Suggestions would be to group by type of clothing, such as tops, pants, skirt, dresses, jackets, casual clothes, work attire, etc. You can further group by color or sleeve length on tops, for example hang your sleeveless, tops in front of the short sleeve, followed by long sleeves.

Keep only what fits in your space and what you can find easily. If your clothes are so packed that you have trouble wrestling the hanger off the pole, then you have too much in your closet. And you probably aren’t seeing everything, therefore, you’re not wearing everything. According to the National Association of Professional Organizers (www.napo.net) we wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time.

Now make a list of items you need to make complete outfits. If you find yourself often saying, “I don’t have anything to wear.” It may be because you only have a hodge-podge of items, nothing that really goes together. Or possibly you’re not shopping wisely by buying items that are a great price but not a great deal. Or are you a fan of retail therapy? Buying while in a bad mood usually leads to bad choices. A good idea is to get to know the sales staff at your favorite stores. They are there to help you find clothes that fit and flatter your shape and style.

Okay now for the suggested donation centers in SCV:

The Assistance League of Santa Clarita
24364 Main Street
Newhall, CA 91321
661.255.1991
www.assistanceleague-alsc.org

Single Mother’s Outreach
24271 Main St.
Santa Clarita, CA 91321
661.288.0117
www.singlemothersoutreach.org

Domestic Violence Shelter
661.259.4357
www.dvcsantaclarita.com

Goodwill
24840 Pico Canyon Road
Stevenson Ranch, CA 91381
661.705.1040
www.goodwillsocal.org

Goodwill
26883 Bouquet Canyon Rd.
Santa Clarita, CA 91350
661.297.0303
www.goodwillsocal.org

"Lessons in Letting Go Confessions of a Hoarder" by Corinne Grant

Lissanne Oliver of Sorted! let me know that she is now carrying the book by Corinne Grant "Lessons in Letting Go Confessions of a Hoarder". Click here to order the book

"Lessons in Letting Go" by Corinne Grant

I follow another Professional Organizer's blog, Lissanne Oliver of Sorted! organizing & decluttering. Lissanne interviews Corinne Grant about her new book "Lessons in Letting Go - Confessions of a Hoarder" I haven't read the book yet but I will certainly put it on my to-read list. Here's some bits from the interview that intrigued me the most:

Lissanne: I thoroughly enjoyed this book: an easy and entertaining read. Very early on, I got a sense of how personal this story was and how brave you were to share it. I really bonded with you over this book. I think many readers will feel the same, and they will definitely identify with your story: I don’t know of any other book like it on the market. Do you feel vulnerable having it all out in the open?

Corinne: I don’t feel vulnerable, strangely enough. I think it’s a combination of having done so much stage work, where I’ve talked about myself, that the book feels like an extension of that, and also, just the fact that I’ve written and re-written so many drafts of the book, that at some stage, it just stopped feeling so deeply personal. I don’t believe in doing things by halves, and the story couldn’t have been told properly unless I was honest, and so, that was simply what had to be done.

You say “In the evenings I would waste my time rearranging and re-stacking piles of god-knows-what, trying to find the magical configuration that would enable me to feel like I was in control. The fear of doing something I might later regret over-ruled any desire to throw it out. If I threw out an old placemat, I might all of a sudden find myself completely unmoored from my past. If I threw out a cardigan my mother had given me for my twenty-third birthday, I might destroy the family bond that held us to each other. We don’t call our possessions ‘belongings’ for nothing and without Thomas beside me it felt like my belongings were the only things holding me together.” You spent a lot of time and energy trying to organise your stuff. How do you feel about that now? Do you have guilt about it?

That’s part of the illness I think of being a hoarder…I think it’s a very Western illness. We do place far more importance on objects – we almost imbue them with human qualities. I had an Indian taxi driver once and he was asking me about the book and I was explaining it and he was saying I just don’t understand what you’re talking about, I Just…. And I tried a few times and he said I seriously don’t understand. And I thought, you know what, you’re not going to! We are completely different people, culturally, to you in that respect just be thankful you’re not one of us!

I guess the point I try to make all the way through the book too is that you’re not going to learn to let go of the stuff until you figure out why you’re hanging on to it in the first place. And you really need to get to that the stuff is a symptom of the fact that you’re not dealing with shit in your life. In the book, as I’m shifting things around, I’m doing that instead of facing up to the fact that I’ve just broken up Thomas… Why did I break up with Thomas? Why did I leave him? I should have been focusing on that not making sure that I labeled a box of 20 year old video tapes. Hoarding’s a very good way of avoiding your life and yet, sitting there in the back of every hoarder’s brain is the thought that there’s something, that you’re just not quite on top of things, or there’s something that you’re missing.

And I think that understanding underpins your success, because people who don’t get that it’s not about the physical stuff, they’re never going to get on top of things.

It’s about a lack of identity I think too. If you’ve got a strong sense of self, you don’t need to be relying on other objects to do that for you. That’s what I figured out for myself, anyway.

That once I started figuring out who I was, then the stuff wasn’t important anymore. I could throw something out and not feel unmoored from my past.

Corinne really did some soul searching and found out some very important things about why she was holding onto the stuff in her life. If you think Corinne's story may help you Let Go of some of your stuff, click here.