Getting it Together

This year I’m taking off the entire Thanksgiving week. I urge you to find some time before  this busy season gets too on it’s way to organize and purge your house. Not only is this the season of charity and my closet has plenty to give, but it’s the idea that with so many coming and goings, that making space will help me keep my sanity.

I usually start with my closet. Being a clothes horse has it’s downfall. I don’t have enough space, and I constantly think that I’ll finally find the “magic” way of getting it all to fit and work functionally without spending magical amounts of money. This is something I’d kill to have, done, I continue to think that my addiction to plastic storage will present the very solution to this quandary, but alas, I continue to sit and lie in wait for it to make itself known.

On the heels of this practice in the closet usually beckons me to unload all of my Christmas decor, which resides in the very next den of purging – the garage. While I’m happy to say that most of my organizing has taken place over the last year, there’s always room for improvement. I continue to ask myself, item in hand, “Do I need this?”, “When was the last time I used it?” and all importantly, “If I lost it tomorrow, how much would it take to replace it?”…after this it’s pretty clear whether or not someone else will make treasure out of something I found just “ok” to own.

After I have these two biggies sorted, I generally go to the nitpicky areas of my house – shelves in the pantry and laundry area, the junk drawer, my paper files, places that I usually throw those last minute organizing things into and forget about until later. It’s these areas that generally have the most donatable or even just plain trash hidden inside them, making me wonder how it is that life accumulated up so quickly!

So donate a bit of time to yourself, it’ll pay off in the holiday season when you’re looking for something and realize that it was there all along…just a bit hidden!