Who, Me?

Painting the kitchen has whipped me into a manic redecorating frenzy. I’ve had to touch almost every surface in the downstairs of the house (the upstairs is next) to get the fine layer of dust off of it from the sanding that the painter did while repairing the walls. I actually had to ask Mike last night to come and make me dinner because as I stood in the kitchen I kept seeing more things to clean!

I keep finding specks of red paint too, and I’m trying to make sure we get all of those up before they do damage.

On top of the kitchen, I’ve been clearing out my closet. Sure, I have thinned out the clothes in the past and donated them to Northwest Assistance Ministries, but this round has been HARD CORE purging. I decided a few weeks ago after watching one of those dangerous HGTV shows that I really wanted nice hangers. They give the closet such a clean and polished look. My theory then was that if I bought a set amount of wood hangers, that was all the clothes that I could have. Buy a new shirt? An old one has to go. If you have 40 hangers for shirts, that means you have enough shirts to go for almost 6 weeks without doing laundry. That should be plenty of shirts.

I bought wooden hangers on Saturday. Sunday, I couldn’t wait any longer to dive in and start using them!

I have since realized that I have a “summer” (most of the year) wardrobe and a “winter” wardrobe, plus a “casual” wardrobe and a “work” wordrobe. Since I’m not working in a corporate office, I don’t need corporate clothes. It is so hard to get rid of some of them though. Not because I like them, but because they are nice clothing in good shape. I have made a special donation pile for the Dress for Success campaign to give them to, and it helps me feel better about it knowing they will go to help someone that needs work clothes. The rest of the piles are going again to NAM.

I’m about halfway through the closet, moving all of the clothes off of the wire hangers and on to wood ones. Even after the initial pass, I still find myself questioning some of the clothes to see if they are wood hanger worthy. Several have not made the cut, and the donation bags are growing larger.

When I ran out of the wood hangers yesterday, I started working on Mike’s side of the closet. Nothing can escape me! (I didn’t put his clothes in the donation pile though – he did that himself.) He is getting white plastic hangers, his hanger of choice. I can’t stand plastic hangers for some reason, but they look nice on his side of the closet.

Mike commented this morning on how he didn’t think that a change of hangers would make such a difference in how the closet looked. He then went on to suggest that maybe we needed to get a color wheel and sort all of my clothes in order. Smartass. Instead, I pointed out that they are sorted by clothing type – short sleeve on the bottom, long sleeve on top. Long sleeve clothes are then divided between jackets, dress sweaters, more casual sweater sets, and even more casual clothes.

Now it is on to the pants/skirts/dresses section of the closet. Well, after I clean the kitchen up some more first. I can only handle the dust so long before it makes me start sneezing, so giving myself a break from that to work in the closet has probably been the best move.

I’ve taken progress photos of both the kitchen & the closet, but I can’t post them until I find my card reader for my camera. I moved so much around before the painter came, now I’m missing things! I’m sure it will turn up soon, and they will be posted tonight! Uhm, that is if I manage to tear myself away from organizing everything!