Well, There's More Room Now

I've been trying to get some motivation going, but it's been a hard road. Miss Serious has been having some insomnia issues in the middle of the night (we're talking being awake for 2-3 hours), thus causing me to have a serious case of exhaustion and sleep-deprived stupidness. She's gotten back on track, but my body hasn't fixed itself yet.

I decided that it would help motivate me to clean/declutter all the little hidey holes in our apartment by taking photos of the mess so I could do a before/after thing. I was hoping that this would keep me in the cleaning spirit, as opposed to what usually happens, which is that I clean out one area, and am so pleased with myself that I decide that's enough for a while (which invariably ends up turning into next year...). Well, I took my pictures, and decided yesterday that I should tackle my bedroom closet. It has become the repository of much more than clothes - anything that doesn't seem to have a home ends up getting shoved in there. Here's a lovely before picture:


And a charming during shot (where did all these clothes come from? I only ever wear 4 things):


And finally, after:


Now there's lots of space. Unfortunately, this is partly because a lot of the items are now in a garbage bag (I couldn't bring myself to take a picture of those). This is because they are apparently delicious. Especially cashmere. Now, I don't come by cashmere easily. Anything I own is the result of a wonderful gift, usually from my mother who hunts up these unbelievable sales. Thus, one can understand my extreme sadness when I opened up my plastic, underbed container and found not one, not two, but about 97 holes in some of my beautiful sweaters. I had dutifully dry-cleaned said sweaters (took off the plastic - ahhh, lesson learned) and placed them in an airtight storage box. Unfortunately, there were either little creatures already in the box, or in something else that was packed up with them, and they spent the summer feasting on cashmere and merino wool. They also enjoyed items in my closet, including some hand-knit elbow length fingerless gloves, which I have since washed, frogged, and salvaged the yarn for something else.

So now, all my yarn is in plastic bags, every item in the closet has either been washed or vacuumed, and every nook and cranny in there has also been vacuumed. I'm trying hard to look at the silver lining, and I do enjoy being able to find and replace clothes in my closet without physical injury to my fingers. I also found a lot of wonderful things tucked away (some old pictures, my HS diploma, and the like) that made me smile, so the day wasn't a total loss. Now, on to the kids' closet...