growing and learning

My closet mountain

06:19 AM, Saturday, January 10, 2009 .. 2 comments .. Link

Now, most people have a closet about 2 feet by maybe 6, basically a wall of the bedroom blocked off by doors. Not me. No, my closet is the size of a small room. It is big enough that had I a window in there, I would seriously consider turning it into a nursery for this coming baby. It was incidental to the house. I did not go looking for a house with a room-sized closet. Dh and I are conservative in our clothing - jeans, t-shirts, church clothes, 3 pairs of shoes each (everyday, church, and a pair of sandals for summer, oh and snow boots - do those count?) Goodness, the 2x6 closet is what we had at our old house, and we never filled it up! Now my sister and her husband came to visit our house for the first time and were JEALOUS of our closet, and wondered what on earth we would do with it. They would fill it up with only half their clothes (he is worse than her in so many ways in that regard!).
So, I have this huge closet with lots of space. what can I do with it. well, I use it for clothes. All the clothes no one is currently wearing. I have all the kids outgrown clothes in there, in bags and boxes and labeled according to gender and size. I have all the shoes they have outgrown. I have all my torn up jeans and old t-shirts there waiting for a quilt. I have all of my non-prego clothes sitting on a shelf waiting for April (it usually takes me a month to stop wearing prego clothes - not saying I loose it all in a month, but the belly starts going down, and I have a set of post-prego that I wear for about a year before I move to my usual size). I have all the clothes I have bought the kids on clearance or gotten through freecycle that are too big for them.
Usually this is nicely organized and put away. But for the last 6 months, I have just been tossing clothing items in there willy-nilly. Just a big pile on the floor. And then it became a bigger pile. It was almost mountainous. You would need some serious climbing gear to get up to the top.
So yesterday, I grabbed a laundry basket, some boxes and a movie and had the kids help me cart it all out of there and into my bedroom where I turned on dd5's new movie she got for her birthday and they watched the movie while I sorted the mountain. This was a special treat indeed... I cannot remember the last time they got to watch a movie. Just sit and watch a movie (although sometimes I will turn on a movie while they are folding their clothes. Sometimes.) But I really needed them to be where I could see them for the 2 hours it was going to take me to do this.
I have an overflowing diaper box of needs-to-be-mended clothes. gee.... I guess I have put that off for a long time. But I have sewing machine now, so I can do that downstairs during the day while the kids play. Shouldn't be too hard. (hahaha, famous last words from a non-sewer! but hey, mending should be agood way to start, right?)
I have an overflowing laundry basket (it could easily FILL two laundry baskets, really) of scrap fabric from old torn clothes waiting for that quilt. There is also two large pieces of fabric I bought years ago when my SIL was going to make me some pretty nursing dresses, but we never did because I got pregnant again (that will mess up your measurements!) and she moved to Virginia. So 3 pregnancies later, I still have this pretty fabric waiting for a dress or two. One day..... And I will make the dresses! hehehe.
I have a large box of freecyle stuff, that is going to get larger once I go through the little girl clothes my dd2 has grown out of. See, I was given TONS of girl clothes when my oldest girl was a baby. Whole wardrobes from at least 2 families. I have never purged it, and so I have at least 2 wardrobe's worth of clothing for an 12mo - 2T girl. We have never even worn half of it. I am getting rid of it. Ashley - if your baby is a girl, do you want it? I would happily ship it to you! There are some seriously NICE clothes in there (one of those wardrobes was from my cousin in NYC who used to be a model in Paris, and buys VERY nice expensive in-style clothes for her children). Some of this box are freecycle items we received that we would never wear, items listed as "Girls clothes 4T. Big box, take all, freecycle what you do not want" type of thing. So, we will be re-listing the tank-tops, etc.
I have a bigger-than-it-should-have-been pile of clothes we are currently wearing but somehow ended up in the mountain. They need to be put away today - yesterday I just sorted. When that was over, it was time to make dinner, then eat, and then start the bedtime.
I have a diaper box of prego clothes I will not be wearing this pregnancy - all the clothes this time around came from either freecycle or borrowed from a friend (who got her's from freecycle too! LOL), so there is a large variety of clothes. A whole box of capris and shorts! And some shirts that are just not my style. So those will be going back in the closet, and in April, all the other prego clothes will join them, and I will return them all to my friend (although, I think I will offer to store them here until she needs them again - my storage space is much larger than hers. It might take a load off her mind to not have to find a place for them.)
There was a pile of prego clothes I need to start wearing - shirts. I have thus far been wearing my normal shirts, but I think that is going to be changing in the next week or so - mine are slowly creeping up my ever-expanding belly! LOL!
I think that was the extent of the piles except for the majority - the clothes we have grown out of. That is a very large pile itself. Almost a mountain in its own right. That will be dealt with last, since it is the pile that needs the most attention. It needs to be sorted by gender, size, and bagged. Then it needs to be put away carefully for the next child to wear it. yup. Loads of fun. My children might get to watch more movies in the coming weeks! LOL!
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Mountain..

07:14 AM, Saturday, January 10, 2009 .. Posted by rstewart8888
This is your version of mountain climbing... and it sounds like you made it to the summit.. GOOD for YOU! Rob S Onario Canada

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11:43 AM, Saturday, January 10, 2009 .. Posted by CandyFoote
It sounds like you turned a huge job into huge fun.
Way to go.
I used to have a huge closet. I loved it.
My husband and I don't have a lot of clothes, so I turned it into my gift closet.
I collect gifts all year long. It makes Christmas and birthdays a lot easier. Plus, when an unexpected event comes up, I would just run up to the closet.

Candy

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