Spring Clean

This beautiful weather gives me the urge to clean and de-clutter my home. My garage sale is scheduled, and now I get to start going through each room of the house getting rid of the stuff that we no longer use. I am working on the hall closet, and I am amazed at how much stuff gets shoved into our "catch-all" closet in a years time. I found a random pacifier, some Glade plug in refills (with no glade plug-in), a few random cleaning products that I forgot I had, and a basket full of projects that I never finished! The sad thing is that I am only half-way done with the closet. I am procrastinating doing the bottom half of the closet because I am terrified of what I will find on the floor. On the bright side, maybe it will be a treasure that I have been missing for a year or two instead of just dust bunnies the size of my shoes.....
I was also surprised when I looked in my closet at all my clothing. At the end of last year, I cleaned out my closet of all the clothing that was backward on the hanger. After reading an article in Real Simple Magazine, I started an experiment with my clothing. The article suggested a way of purging your closet of unused clothing by hanging up all clothing up on hangers in the closet facing the same backward direction. Once worn, and washed, its to be hung up on the hanger facing the opposite direction. This is to be done for a one year time period, and at the end of the year, the owner of the clothing will be able to see what exactly has been worn or not. (I actually had to do it for a 2 year time period, because there was a pregnancy in between.) After the 2 years were up, I went through my closet and mercilessly pulled out anything that had not been worn, bagged it up, and sold it on Craigslist. My closet was nearly empty, but at least I had a good idea of the clothes that I actually wore. Long story short, at the start of this year, in an attempt to be "green", I made a new years resolution not to buy any new clothing for 2009. I only allowed myself to shop at 2nd hand, and thrift stores. Soooo, when I looked in my closet yesterday, I was shocked to see that it has filled up again with clothes. I haven't broken my resolution, but I am surprised at how many thrift store finds that I have scored! Looks like I might be starting my experiment again soon.
Well, wish me luck - I still have 75% of the house left to clean before May, and although that seems like a ridiculous statement, please remember that I have 3 little ones who demand 90% of my attention during the day.