"Tis the season for decluttering, purging, and organizing!

"Tis the season for decluttering, purging, and organizing! - At least it seems that way based on all the posts I see in online forums, and the many television shows along those lines that I see as I'm flipping channels, and magazine articles I see as I'm flipping pages.

At the house we live in, my husband and I both have a walk-in closet.  They're not huge closets, so maybe it's more accurate to call them "step-ins" because there is just enough room to step in, and turn around. While we really try to keep on top of organization, every year or so, we have to go through them and get rid of stuff. It was time for both closets to have a good going-through, so that was the project yesterday afternoon.

Even though they weren't packed beyond capacity, I still managed to fill a few laundry baskets with things to donate. I'll box them up so that we can drop them off during the week at the Purple Heart donation dropoff station near our house.  I had thought about getting a booth at an upcoming community garage sale to sell it off, but the price has gone up, it's not worth it anymore.  I really haven't gotten involved in Freecycling, I signed up for the freecycle forum in my area, but mostly it was requests for high-ticket items. Same with Craigslist free section, mostly junk people want somebody else to haul off, or people requesting high-ticket items. Not much in run of the mill stuff being offered or requested.

One of the things I did was get rid of half of my purses. I had way too many that were too much alike, and none of them were anything special. I'm not a purse lover. I have a few that I love, but I don't collect handbags or get particularly excited over them. The only time a designer bag catches my eye is when you can tell the quality of materials and workmanship is better than something less expensive. I have all of four "designer" purses. 2 came from thrift shops, and the other 2 from Marshall's (and were on clearance at that). The others are just generic cheap purses from places like Target, sometimes a sale table at a department store, and the thift shop.

I'm the same way with shoes, although I have a lot more shoes than purses. But simply because it's not always easy for me to find shoes that fit, don't hurt my feet, and at least somewhat go along with my personal style. I tend to take good care of them and hold onto them as long as I can. But, I managed to get rid of some shoes anyway, and made room in my shoe shelves for a few new pair.

Other than that, it was some clothes we never wear, and random pieces of whatnot.  I have some sewing to do, and as soon as I have some new tops made for myself, I'll be getting rid of several more things in my closet, although they'll probably be going in the trash. I've had the same half-dozen peasant style blouses that I've been wearing with jeans for years now. They've started to look flat out shabby, so I got rid of the worst already and altered the few remaining ones to fit better. But I really need to replace the rest before the weather warms up again. Same with jeans. I'm wearing them until they are too worn out to be presentable and then just replacing them with better fitting ones as I can.

The next project will be the garage, lots of stuff to get rid of in there.