Closet purge and shuffle

I had the most pleasant time organizing my closet yesterday. No, for reals. I love to clean and organize, and the kids were at school, Ben at work-- I had unhindered cleaning time. My friend Amy posted Facebook pictures of her recent closet makeover, and I was all, "OMG, I need to do that!" Plus, you know, we are starting to dream about actually selling this house, so closet clean-outs are the first step toward that goal, too.

Because I am kind of checked out mentally and looking forward to a day of Baby Story and the first season of Gilmore Girls (another kickass Christmas gift from Ben), I am going to show you pictures of my clean closet, but they aren't very interesting, especially because I forgot to take any "before" pictures. In a typical dumbass move, I never tested the over-the-door shoe rack I got for Ben's shoes, you know, to make sure the door would close. Yeah. After I got the whole closet cleaned, vacuumed, etc and got all his giant shoes shoved in the little mesh compartments, I discovered the door would not close. Of course. There was a nasty minute when I thought I was jammed inside the closet because I forced the door closed, but really? I don't think I would have minded. There are blankets in there and I had my diaper bag, meaning I had my Nalgene bottle and my iPad. Plus I could hear Property Virgins on the bedroom TV. It would have been a good place to hang out until Ben and the kids got home. But instead, I climbed on my little step stool (which I have to use all the time to get anything off my shelves because I am so darn short) and pried the shoe rack thingy off the door. Phew!

Okay, the "after pictures." (For "before" shots, just imagine a ridiculous tumble of shit that assaults you aesthetically and physically.)

The bins have our sweatshirts that won't fit in our dressers, and the clear Tupperwares have random odds and end that used to be shoved haphazardly on the closet shelves and would periodically rain down on us.

That giant bag has all my old purses, and the shelves have boots and more boxes of random stuff-- files, papers that seemed too important to throw away and have been living in our closet for years, art projects from preschool, you know, important stuff.

Some of my shoes.

More of my shoes

A wall of ties and scarves and belts.

The upshot is that we can actually walk in our closet again-- it's been awhile. On the floor, we have a huge storage bag of blankets and Ben's shoes in a giant bin. This replaces piles of shoes, a slew of bags, random Nerf guns, and sweatshirts that fell from their positions crammed between lint brushes and old binders. It was seriously dreamy in there-- especially because every time I opened the door, the ironing board would come crashing down and hit me in the head.

So, yeah. That's my major accomplishment of late. Riveting, huh?