project closet organization

Yesterday, it was the weirdest thing.

The kids were gone, and I got the whole house cleaned, we are talking vacuumed and everything. And then, I still had like five hours to burn before they came home. I was a little bored. So I decided that I was going to try to deep clean something everyday, at least until the newness of them being gone wears off.

Today I am tackling my closet. Well, our closet. Sam and I share now. I am not so sure how I feel about that. In the old master bedroom, we each had our own closet. When we remodeled, we have a deep utility type closet, and a walk-in clothes closet. The idea was, the utility one was going to be for storage, and have a lock on it so I could use it as a Christmas closet, and collect things throughout the year. I know you are jealous, thinking about that. It must be a woman thing, cause Sam thought that was the stupidest thing ever, so as luck would have it, he took over the utility closet. That thing is packed full. Of his crap.

Now, by crap, I guess I am a little skewed on my opinion.

But let's talk about his trove of trash, shall we?

Sam has stuffed the closet chock full of man treasures, like two years worth of NINJA magazines (87-89). I mean, you never know when you need an article on how to "poison your unsuspecting enemy with a toxic tomato-leaf salad." We have that. June, 1988.

Then there is his plastic cigarette lighter collection. He collected lighters when he was in junior high. I am not sure why, he has never smoked and no one in his family smokes. The box is bigger than a shoe-box, and stuffed full of rusted Bic's. I asked him once if I could just chuck the whole box, and he looked at me as if I had asked him to remove one of his um, man-berries. I never asked again. And so it sits in the closet.

I probably shouldn't even be mentioning the next item, cause I could be setting myself up for a house robbery...but, he has action figures in original boxes, waiting, and waiting, because he is SURE those things are going to fetch us a million dollars on eBay one day. Sure. Just like beanie babies.

Have I ever mentioned that he sometimes metal detects? Yeah, well that is a post for another day, but he has shoe-boxes full of rusty crap, bottle caps, broken earrings, buttons, bent nails. Treasures! TREASURES I TELL YOU!!

Then in the top of the closet are unopened boxes of exercise tapes. One late, night, he got sucked into an infomercial for some type of exercise system. And the tapes started coming faithfully in the mail. You can see, those have really done well for us. Still in the boxes up there on the top shelf.

And the last thing I want to mention are all the wires and electronic things. He has kept every phone charger cord, every cable and speaker wire to every device we have ever owned. Why? I am not sure. But we have enough black plastic coated wires to snake around the whole town and back. All wound up in that closet.

I am not touching his closet.

I am, however, cleaning out the other one. The one with both of our clothes in it. The one that I selfishly store my things in. Taking up good real estate in that closet are things like:
My Wedding Dress
My grandmas jewelry
The kids' blessing outfits

You know, junk.

So I am going to try to de-clutter in there. I am starting with my belt collection. I am not sure why I even have them. I haven't worn a belt since 1995, when I got pregnant with my first child. After that, belts became a mockery of my life when I actually had a waist.

Here are the belts I found buried in the closet:

The blue beauty came with a pair of pants I got a Kohls. Recently too. I didn't ever feel hip enough to pull off the macrame 60's look. With fringe.

The plastic black and white. What do you even say about that, unless you are "Puttin' on the Ritz" and need to polish off your outfit with a belt to match your spats.

The OLE! belt was from my honeymoon to California, and the token trip into Tijuana, where I picked up that belt. It went with everything. And it is for a 26 inch waist. Not sure what type of pipe dream I was trying to hold onto there, by keeping that belt for 13 years.

That brown thing, is actually a purse strap. I haven't owned the purse it went to for years.

And the mango canvas belt? Yeah, I am not sure about that either. It looks like a dog leash.

So there you go. Me, doing my part to purge. I am sure the thrift store is going to be in 7th heaven when they get this bag of goods.

And if they can't use it, I am sure they can just burn in with their new collection of vintage Bic lighters. Heh.