Recently I embarked on a journey. Not a journey to a far-off land, but one inside my home – into the depths of my main bedroom closet. Yes, I conducted a massive closet clean out.
My house is a fairly nice house, but the one thing it lacks is closet space. I have literally two closets in the entire house. No linen closet, no hall closet, just bedroom closets. Closet space is at a premium, but after a few years of lazily chucking things into the closet, a lot of detritus built up in the bedroom closet. Shoes overflowing the rack, purses strewn across the floor, pillows and blankets shoved into corners. It was in desperate need of paring down.
Unfortunately, cleaning out the closet has always been complicated for me, as clothes have a lot of emotion tied to them. It’s hard to give up on a gift, even if it’s ugly, or let go of that favorite shirt even though it’s a size too small and has obvious deodorant stains. This leads to a lot of clothes kept that I don’t need or want, and continual frustration when I don’t want to wear anything in my closet.
I’ve tried to clean out the closet in the past with moderate success, but this time ended differently. This time the closet is actually clean and decluttered. I didn’t follow a strict method, but these are the things I did that helped me get the job done.
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Set A Goal
Setting a goal is probably the most important thing in this whole post. Before you start, set a clear goal for what you want and commit to accomplishing the goal. Ideally, the goal should be specific so that there’s no flexing or wiggle room to end up keeping things that you should be getting rid of.
For me, my goal was that all clothes hanging in my closet would fit and look good. Having a clear goal makes it easier when struggling with an item later – you can just ask the question “Does keeping this fit my goal?”. If yes, then keep it, if no, well, you know what you have to do.
Get In The Cleaning Mindset
Something that really helped me get motivated for the closet clean out was consuming cleaning media. This could mean different things for different people, but I gravitated to a couple sources of inspiration.
First, if you’ve never consumed any of Marie Kondo‘s content, I would highly recommend it. I first encountered her via the Netflix series where she helps people declutter their lives, and she also has a book entailing her method. Even if I don’t follow her method exactly, it has certainly helped me become okay with letting items go, no matter what emotional baggage may be attached to them.
Second, I actually watched random YouTube clean outs. There was something about watching other people go through their own mess that really stuck with me. Like, if these influencers and creators can go through this publicly, I can certainly do the same privately. One of my favorites was Mia Maples’ Swedish Death Cleaning video where she declutters her entire house under the premise of “who would want this if I died?”. I also loved looked at beauty influencers get rid of old makeup (there are many in this genre on YouTube, beauty influencers have a lot of stuff apparently).
These aren’t the only things you could use – Pinterest is a source of never ending beautiful home inspiration, and TikTok and Instagram have many addicting videos of people cleaning absolutely nasty items. Look for whatever gives you that sense of ambition – that you, too, can have a perfectly spotless closet.
Set Up For Success
Have a Plan For the Items You Don’t Want
Something I’ve fallen for many times while decluttering is identifying that an item doesn’t belong in its current location, but then not identifying where it should go. So it ends up either remaining where it shouldn’t, or shoved into yet another, slightly different, junk corner. Don’t fall into that pattern!
What was really effective for this particular closet clean out was making sure that every item or piece of clothing went somewhere. Either it went back into the closet, it went into the donation bag, or it went into the trash bag. It didn’t sit in a miscellaneous pile, or a “I’ll get around to that later” pile. It went into another container where it belonged.
And, once the clean out was done – I actually drove to Goodwill and donated the items marked for donation. If you’re like me, you’ve been guilty of letting those bags sit in a corner or in your trunk for months. Don’t let it happen. Get that stuff that you don’t want out of your life – you will feel so much lighter. If you’re reading this and you have a bag of whatever to donate, seriously, it takes like ten minutes, go do it and get an iced coffee on your way home. You will feel so much better!
Successfully Try On Clothes
Because a large focus for me was the clothing portion of the closet, I really tried to give myself a successful start. I wanted everything to fit and look good, but that also meant confronting that I’ve put on a few pounds in the pandemic and there are things that I like that I can’t fit into. This is where the emotions come in and threaten to ruin all progress.
But! All was not lost. For items that were in a size that I knew would not fit, I didn’t bother trying. It can become overwhelming to constantly try on clothes that don’t zip, so I saved my effort for the clothes I knew were within range.
When I did try on clothes, I made a good environment. I put on some good music, had good lighting in the room, I wore a bra that I knew fit, or jeans or a top that I knew were flattering. That way, when a piece didn’t look good I didn’t have the voice in my head trying to convince myself that “maybe this will look good with xyz“. If it doesn’t look good with things you know look good, just get rid of it. Life is too short to have clothes you don’t look good in.
Things That Can Help
You definitely don’t have to buy anything to declutter effectively. I’m not one of those people who has everything in my pantry in color matching and labeled clear bins. That will never happen. But there were some things that helped me organize my closet and will hopefully prevent it from getting back to its previous state.
Hangers
I used to have the thick plastic hangers and with this closet clean out I have entirely switched to these velvet ones. It’s a small thing that makes a big difference. These hangers leave fewer hanger indentations in the shoulders, they take up less space in the closet because they’re thinner, and my silky or thin-strapped clothes don’t slip off of these. Highly recommend these if you need hangers.
Shoe Rack
I own too many shoes, and so does my husband. I’ve tried to pare down the amount several times, but I just can’t be minimalist with shoes! So I gave up on a smaller two shelf shoe rack, and got this giant one from Wayfair instead. It fit perfectly along the back wall of our closet. I would recommend this specific one, as it’s fairly sturdy and holds shoes as advertised, but obviously measure your own space and see what will work.
Boxes
I said earlier that I’m never going to be one to have color matching storage solutions, and this is about as far as I will go in that direction. I’m using the lidded storage boxes to hold some rarely used soft materials, so that dust won’t get on the items. I’m using the open boxes to store bedsheets and blankets which are cycled frequently, and to hold a few miscellaneous goods so that they won’t come toppling off the high shelf onto my head. I do like this particular brand, the boxes seem fairly sturdy and like they won’t rip apart after one move, which is all I expect from these types of containers.
KOMPLEMENT organizer
I bought this years ago when I first had my own apartment after college and I love this organizer. It’s perfect for belts and scarves and really anything you can hang from it. If you have the hanging space in your closet, I would definitely recommend picking one up during your next Ikea adventure.
The Closet Clean Out Result
I didn’t take a before picture because I didn’t think I would end up writing a blog post about it, and I also just didn’t want that memory around. But here’s the result of my closet clean out, it took about a week and a half of on-and-off work.
The first thing my husband said when he saw it was “Wow I can see the floor” if that gives any indication of what it looked like previously. It’s much less cluttered, and serves a functional purpose of holding items that I actually use and wear.
What do you think? How do you effectively tackle decluttering your house? Do you use a similar method? I’d love to hear what you have to say in the comments below!
