Challenge #2 - Clean Our Your Closet! - Erica's Review

I started strong with this challenge but then fizzled out.

I chose my strongest item first which was shoes! Between our coat closet and bedroom closet, I had 54 pairs of shoes. I donated 15 pairs (28%). I was able to move shoes from the coat closet to the newly spacious rack in our bedroom closet, only keeping downstairs the pairs I wear on a weekly basis which helped clean up the floor of the coat closet which I could then vacuum.

I also had a plethora of scarfs, many handmade by my mother. I donated 6 of the 12 (50%). I also donated 2 of my 7 pairs of gloves (28%), 1 of my 4 hats (25%), 1 of my 10 jackets (10%) and 3 of my 19 purses (16%).

For clothing, I donated 39 items and tossed 26 items (socks with holes, etc).

The ridiculous # of clothing items I have left:

Hanging in the Bedroom Closet - 136 items
In my Dresser (minus underwear, socks, etc...) - 127 items
On the shelf in the closet (hiking/biking clothes) - 22 items

Per his post, Jon donated 59 items (I didn't count the underwear as I didn't include that here). The number of items Jon has left (he didn't count):

Hanging in the Bedroom Closet - 122 items
In his Dresser (minus underwear, socks, and a whole drawer of workout clothes which I was too lazy to try to count) - 124 items
On the shelf in the closet - 28 items
In the coat closet - 10 coats
Shoes - 19 pairs

Well... I must say that my husband's assessment that his clothes are bigger and take up significantly more space appears to have some merit.

I also pack things in better. Here is my sweater drawer:

and T-shirt drawer, the shirts stacked on the right are breastfeeding shirts:

Despite us having nearly identical number of hanging items, I have a ton more open space. Additionally, a whole section of my closet is breastfeeding tops which I did not count. No honey, this does not mean you get some of my space ;-)

Somehow Jon's side is still full from end to end (his clothes are bigger argument). Despite it still looking full, he really did free up some space. If I shove things aside, I can now hang up a shirt on his side without difficulty!

Challenge assessment (so very, very approximate as math is not my strong suit!) -

I met my 10% goal
Jon cleaned out 20%

But -

We did not delve into our son's closet. I did look and the only items in there are my wedding dress (still uncleaned since 2014, that's been on my to-do list for years now) and a bunch of Jon's suits.

We are also still in possession of all our donations (challenge fail). We had several baby items to donate as well so I scheduled a pick up with Salvation Army. The earliest date we could get was tomorrow which was perfect because we have family coming into town for Labor Day weekend and they arrive tomorrow. Unfortunately, I've just received a message that our pickup needs to be rescheduled...so now we are in exactly the place I didn't want to be... With bags of stuff sitting around and company arriving.

Things I've learned...

The hardest part of the challenge was finding time to post on the blog about it!

Don't expect Jon to be excited about (or do) menial time consuming tasks like counting items of clothing.


What will our next challenge be??? I told Jon it was his turn to pick :-)