Project Simplify: Desk & Closet

My desk is a never ending project.  I get it cleaned off one day and by the next, it’s a disaster area again.  Here’s a before picture:

and after:

I sell a lot of things on eBay, so I have packages under my desk and next to it.  But, at least most of them are now corralled into containers.

Last year I had my sister come over while I tried on a large portion of my clothes and she helped me decide which ones to get rid of.  The past two weeks I’ve been trying on the clothes again. I have a lot of work clothes that no longer fit me after I had my daughter, but I was hoping they’d fit some day soon.  Well, most of them still don’t fit, so I decided it was time to let them go.

I have been wanting to reorganize my closet so I could find things more easily. I finally decided to put like items together and then sort them by color.  So, tops would be together and within that section all the black tops would be together etc.  I have two closets (well my husband has one half of one and the other half of the second one has my wedding dress in it).

Here’s a before picture of the first closet: (nevermind all the junk on the floor.  That’s a project for another week!)

and after (the stuff on the far left is maternity and I didn’t want to mix it in with the rest of my clothes)

Before closet 2

After closet 2 (I put my warmer tops in this closet and categorized them by sweaters, sweatshirts, etc.  Oh, well the far right side has my t-shirts for wearing around the house).

The below  picture only shows some of what I’m getting rid of.  The other items were in the wash as I plan to list them on eBay.  I didn’t count the total number of items I’m getting rid of, but I did count 9 pairs of work pants.  Yikes!  Good thing I’m not in the working world any longer or I’d have to do some serious work clothes shopping!

I absolutely love my new method of organizing my clothes in the closet! The first wonderful moment was when I was looking for a top to wear with a pair of greenish capri’s my sister had given me.  I’m a bit fashion challenged and had no idea what to wear with them.  She said a dark solid shirt would do.  It was a hot day, so I knew I wanted to wear short sleeves.  I walked over to my newly beautifully arranged closet, saw that the only solid colored short sleeve shirts I have are black.  I  grabbed one in all of 5 seconds and that was that.  It was brilliant!  No more going through each item looking for that elusive top I want to wear.  And putting my clothes away is easier too because I have an empty hanger right where it goes.