Move It Out Monday

It's another Move It Out Monday and boy do I need it. I am working with my daughter to go through clothes and decide which to keep and which to part with. This is a long, serious, sometimes frustrating process. That brings me to the idea, which I have proposed before...of a regularly scheduled time to do such things. As I talked about with the decluttered garage, unless I stay on top of it...the clutter will accumulate again quickly! 

What about with clothes?  Often spring/summer and fall/winter seem like natural times for decluttering and working with the clothes monster.  But what about "off season" storage? How do you store and organize those items that you are keeping but are not in season?  For me this is a big challenge as we do not have adequate closet space.

Currently I am working my way through a messy and cluttered laundry room filled with totes and baskets of old clothes, some of which could be being used except they are lost among the mess.  I cringe at the thought of buying another tote for "storage" of off season clothes because what has happened in the past is that the tote gets buried among everything else and not opened up and used again as it should.

Totes in and of themsleves are not bad storage. Realistically the first step is to decide just how many off season items do you really want to keep. I must admit I often keep clothes well past their prime. If I was more ruthless at the end of each season perhaps the clothing mess could be contained....with one off season tote per person in our household!

So today the goal is my college age daughter's clothes....divide what she brought home into seaon/off season and get rid of some items in the whole process. Then we will find a tote that is in the laundry room (hopefully getting rid of more items from that tote) and pack away the off season pieces she wants to keep!

Wish me luck!  I'd love to hear how you handle off season items and how you delcutter clothes. Please share your ideas by leaving a comment!