Bell bottom blues...

you made me cry
I don't want to lose this feeling
-Derek & The Dominos, "Bell Bottom Blues"

Okay, if you've read my blog before, you realize that disorganization is part of my life. I mean, it's part of most everyone's life to some greater or lesser extent. Let's just say I lean toward the greater extent. In my last post, I 'fessed up to my paper problem. But it pales in comparison to my clothing problem.

I'm certainly no fashionista and don't have an overload of clothes. I do have a few things in my closet that I wore a decade ago in college. (You know, "just in case" I ever fit into them again. Or just in case they ever come back around to be in style again. Hmmm - I'm starting to think my organization problem is actually a "Just In Case" problem in disguise...)

But clothes in my house are EVERYWHERE. Piles on my dresser. Piles on my floor. Piles of yet-to-be-folded laundry on the pool table. Piles ready for my semi-annual trip to the dry cleaner. (and I wonder why it's $50 every time I go?!) A pile to be ironed. Piles of kid clothes to go into the attic for kid #2 to grow into. Piles of hand-me-downs that kid #1 isn't quite big enough for. Piles that are clean and folded but need to be put away. Quite literally, every single room in my house has a pile of clothes that ought to be somewhere other than in a pile.

But I'm trying! I spent a couple hours last weekend cleaning out the two very nice, very LARGE bathroom closets into some sort of order. These closets used to hold our washer and dryer until we built a laundry room, so they have a ton of space I wasn't using very effectively. I had maternity clothes overflowing paper grocery bags in one closet. (Pray tell - why in the world would I have put maternity clothes into that closet?! It's not like I'm going to need them in the foreseeable future. But I digress.) Maternity clothes, welcome to boxes. Let me introduce you to the attic. Next season's kid clothes? Now neatly packed in labeled boxes, ready for 4T winter and 24 mo/2T winter. Yeehaw.

And to help with another attire problem that has plagued our bedroom closet, I got a shoe rack. One that doesn't collapse under the weight of actual shoes! (Important quality in a shoe rack, I might add.) It's got my shoes where they are visible, and I've now worn 3 pairs that I had kinda-sorta forgotten I owned. I'm moving in the right direction.

One of the comments on my last post was from my dear friend Mindy, who does not posses a disorganized cell in her body. She posted a link to Unclutterer, which has instantly become my new favorite site - it's got practical tips on eliminating stuff you don't need, and really using stuff you do. Surfing around the site today, I discovered this. I must share the hilariousness of this with you:

Back on November 3, there was a fun comment thread on Reddit discussing “Where the h*ll do you put clothes you’ve already worn but plan on wearing again??” Many of the commenters agreed that they use:

ks50: the floor.

DJgiantboydetective: my system is even more involved. I’ve got the “worn once but totally good to go” area, and the “kind of questionable but OK if you’re just going to the store” area. the two areas are very clear in my head, but if you looked at them, you’d think my place just got robbed.

VladimirKal: My floordrobe is organised in pretty much the same way. People can never seem to believe that there is actually an organised mess rather than just a mess.

electrostate: FLOORDROBE. You sir are a genius.

FLOORDROBE.

I think they've been to my house.

(PS - I was going to include a picture of my newly organized and lovely linen closet with its tubs of carefully labeled next size/next season clothes. Alas, the camera is MIA. I've got a ways to go on this getting organized business, huh?)