The Great Clothing Purge

I'm forever trying to get my house organized.  It's way easier said than done.  Especially when you have 8 people living in one house.

We are very blessed.  Very, very, abundantly blessed.  We actually have an over-abundance in some areas.  Like toys.  Maybe that will be my next big project.  Today, it's clothes.

I have way too many clothes in this house.  I have clothes in every size.  Clothes for every season.  Clothes for both genders.  Maternity clothes.  Skinny-I-hope-to-one-day-fit-into-you-again clothes.  In-between-I'm-not-pregnant-but-I'm-still-holding-on-to-way-too-much-baby-fat-and-I'm-really-craving-cinnamon-rolls-and-going-to-give-in-but-I'll-blame-it-on-the-baby clothes.  But limited storage space.  The end result is not pretty.  Especially when you start pulling clothes out of everywhere because you're trying to look for one swimsuit that you know is somewhere, but apparently when you put it away, you thought it was size 5 instead of 6 mo.  So you looked in nearly every other bin before the size 5 one.  Easy mistake to make, right?

But once you have all of those bins pulled out, your classroom looks something like this:

And this:

And your laundry room looks like this:

And this:

So I've started purging.  Would you believe that I had 15 footie jammies size 6-12 months?  FIFTEEN!?!?!?!?!?  Now, I love seeing my babies in footie jammies.  But do they really need a whole drawer of them?

So the LifeCare Center is going to have a huge donation.  Some things will be given away on Freecycle.  Others have seen better days and are ready for the garbage.

Maybe, once I have everything nicely finished and put away, I'll actually have some empty bins!!  Maybe I'll post some after pictures.

Then, it's on to the toys...

Quick Tip #1

There are some tips that I have picked up in life that revolutionize how I do things.  The one I'm going to talk about today revolutionized my linen closet!

Ok, maybe revolutionized is a bit strong, but it definitely organized my linen closet.  And it's soooooo simple!  We have 6 beds being used in this house, soon to be 7.  That's a lot of fitted sheets, flat sheets, and pillowcases.

Here's the tip:  when you wash and fold your sheets, tuck all the sheets and pillowcases of the set into one of the pillowcases in that same set!!

For example, the following is my daughter's twin sheet set.  I folded the flat sheet and fitted sheet and put them both into the pillow case.  Then, when I'm looking in my linen closet for a twin set, I just grab that pillowcase, and everything's together!

For queen sizes, I fold the flat and fitted sheets and one pillowcase and tuck it all into the other pillowcase.  For crib sheets, I have a very stretchy knit pillowcase that I fold all of the crib sheets into.  

All of this stacks nicely and neatly into the linen closet if you stack them.  If you let your 6-and-8-year-olds stack them, it's not so nice and neat (which is why I'm not showing you a picture inside my linen closet itself). However, even if they're all jumbled in your closet, it's still so easy to find exactly what you're looking for when everything is nicely contained together!

What tips have revolutionized your life?