Spring cleaning during spring break is so cliché. Since my family didn’t have any plans this spring break, I decided to do some spring cleaning.
I’ve been wanting to spring clean my daughter’s closet for over four months. I’ve had two bags of extra clothes that my daughter got from her older, stylish cousin in California. I couldn’t put the used clothes into her closet until we got rid of all her smaller clothing that was taking up space in her closet. Luckily for my daughter, I don’t buy new clothes for her since she gets her clothes from her cousin in California and from her older sister.
I used some of the rules from The Joy of Less when cleaning out my daughter’s closet:
- Trash, Treasure, or Transfer.
- Reason for each item.
- Everything in its place.
- Limits (stuff must fit into the space, if the space overflows that’s when you need to donate your items.
- If one comes in, one goes out.
I also used the KonMarie method of:
- Bringing out all of the clothing in the center of the room
- I asked my daughter, if each of the clothing item “sparks joy” and makes her happy. Clothes that didn’t make her happy went straight to the donate pile.
The goal of cleaning out the closet was to get rid of clothes that did not fit my daughter. We took out all the clothes and things that did not belong on the shelves in her closet. Once all the clothes were in a pile, my daughter tried all of her clothes. Anything that did not fit her or “spark joy” went straight to the donate pile (see photo above: clothes on chair and clear plastic bag were donated). All the items that didn’t go to the donate pile went to the trash pile (see photo below: all items on the floor went to the trash).
We made sure to go to the goodwill/thrift store that same day to make sure all the donated items didn’t trickle back into the house and in the closet. We also went to Jamba Juice afterwards to reward ourselves for doing a good job of cleaning out the closet.
Currently the closet looks the same, but with clothes that now fit my daughter. At lease she isn’t wearing clothes that are a size or two smaller. 🙂
The photo below shows the other side of the closet. All items were removed from the days of the week shelves. My daughter can now plan out her clothes for the week if she wants to. I haven’t seen those shelves empty in so many years. 🙂 It took two hours to clean out her closet.
Take the time to also maintain the closet after a couple of months since your kids are constantly growing. Now I have to tackle my older daughter’s closet again. 🙂
