Do you feel overwhelmed at Christmas with all the extra "stuff" in your home?
Before Christmas there are lots of holiday items taking over your home. Decorations, gifts, lights, craft supplies, activities and projects for kids, holiday CD's, special baking supplies and tools, candles, Christmas cards, gift wrap, holiday dishes, and Christmas clothing. Just to name a few!
And after Christmas there are all the new gifts cluttering up your home. Toys, books, electronics, games, clothes, and more decorations! It can make your home feel cluttered.
One of the best ways to simplify Christmas is to declutter in the weeks leading up to Christmas. To help you do that, I'll be doing a series of posts this month sharing ideas to help you declutter your home for a simpler Christmas. Join me!
Today's decluttering project is to declutter clothing. I don't know about you, but we receive a lot of clothing as Christmas gifts, plus my daughter's birthday is in October and my birthday is in December and we both tend to be given clothes for birthdays too. So, usually around this time of year I go through all our closets and dressers to purge clothing and make room for the new items we receive.
I started with my daughter's clothes. She's had a recent growth spurt and she received several bags of hand-me-down clothes. Plus the birthday gifts I just mentioned. So her dressers and closet needed a good overhaul.
If you missed it before, click these links to see how I organized her dressers (yep that's plural!) and closet.
I've updated a few things since those posts {I'll share pics in the new year}, but the basic organization is the same.
I purge my daughter's clothes at least 2-3 times per year, and I just did it in September when the seasons changed, but I was still able to purge 2 large bags from her room.
Actually, there was more than that because I also donated a bag a couple weeks ago. As usual, I purged the following types of clothes:
- Clothes that are too small or don't fit her body type
- Pieces that are not worn very often
- Items she has too many of
- Clothing that doesn't have a match {e.g. pants that would require a specific colour shirt to go with them but she doesn't have that colour shirt - unless it's something really special I won't buy the required shirt when she already has plenty of clothes, so there's no point holding onto those pants. Her clothing is generally pretty simple to match though because almost everything is pink or purple!}
- Things that are not her style or that she doesn't really like {she's able to express her opinions on her preferences more so I no longer keep or store things that she's not interested in}
My daughter's drawers and closet have some breathing room now and space to add any new clothing she receives at Christmas. And her "Grow Into Clothes" basket and "Giveaway Clothes" baskets in her closet are empty :)
After going through my daughter's clothes, I tackled my son's. He recently received 2 bags of hand-me-downs too {we love free clothes!!} so to make space for those and the clothes he'll likely receive at Christmas, we purged his drawers as well. Here's his giant bag of giveaway clothes.
We purged a lot more of his clothes in September and he's not growing quite as quickly as my daughter, so we didn't give away quite as many clothes right now. But his drawers have some breathing room now too.
As for my hubby's and my clothes, we've been purging on and off all through the fall. We donated two bags a couple of weeks ago.
All of our closets and dressers are now filled with clothing that fits and that we like and actually wear. And they have breathing room to add new items into the mix in a few weeks.
It feels so good to purge clothes! And I love handing down clothes since we receive so many hand-me-downs ourselves. Donating clothing to our favourite charities is a great feeling too. And having breathing room in dressers and closets is wonderful!
If you're feeling overwhelmed with clothing in your home, take some time this week to purge some of it. It will make choosing outfits simpler and you won't have to fight to fit everything in when you're putting away laundry :) Plus, you'll have space to add new clothing gifts after the holidays! The people you give your clothing too will appreciate it too.
Before I sign off, I wanted to mention that if you follow me on the From Overwhelmed To Organized Facebook page, you're likely not seeing very many of my posts there. Facebook has once again changed things. Generally only around 5%-10% of you actually see my FB posts according to my stats. It's slightly better when I put the link and/or picture in the comments, which is why you see me doing that most of the time, but it's still not very many of you.
The best way to see all my posts is to subscribe to the blog by email. To do that, just scroll back up to the top of this page and under my picture on the right you'll see a place to sign up {then you'll have to click a link in your email to confirm you actually want to subscribe}. There are other ways to follow listed there as well if you prefer one or more of those.
OK, enough about that! Ready to purge some clothing?
If you missed any of the Christmas posts I've shared this month, here are links to all of them.
You can also find more Christmas organizing ideas on my Christmas Organizing board on Pinterest.
And of course you can always find decluttering ideas on my Decluttering / Purging Tips & Ideas board on Pinterest.
What clothing can you declutter before Christmas? How do you declutter before the holidays? I hope you are able to have a simpler Christmas by decluttering some of your clothes!
Happy organizing!
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