Last week, I went in search of hangers for the clothes I just pulled out of the dryer. Amazingly, I couldn’t find a spare hanger in my closet or my husband’s closet. This seems to be a weekly occurrence for me. And every week I find myself pulling hangers out of the guest bedroom closet. At this rate, I’ll soon have no hangers left for guests, so I jumped into my car and headed out to the nearest store that sells hangers. For me, that was my local Target. Halfway there I thought to myself, do I really need to buy more hangers and shove more clothes into my already packed closet? No, so I turned the car around, marched upstairs into my bedroom and opened the closet door and examined. I did not physically go through my clothes, instead I just stood back and looked at them. From where I stood, I could see all the clothes I no longer wore. Why was I saving these clothes? One reason is, most of my clothes are in great shape and barely look worn. It wasn’t because I didn’t wear them, but because I’m a bit anal when I do laundry. So much so that my husband has been told not to wash my clothes. It’s tough to get rid of clothes that look almost brand new. The second reason is, that while I may not wear these particular clothes now, you just never know, I may want to in the future. This reason is a little crazy because I have clothes I have not worn in years. When I did wear them, I loved them. Why don’t I love them now? It’s not that I don’t love them now, I just got tired of them. So when I start to reason it that way, I have to tell myself, even though I once loved a particular piece of clothing, I no longer enjoy wearing it. What makes me think that in the future, I’ll go to my closet pick out this particular piece of clothing I haven’t wore in years and suddenly decide I want to wear it again? I won’t, that will never happen. Then of course, I have a small space in my closet that houses my sentimental pieces. Clothes that belonged to my brother who passed away in 1987, clothes that my mom made for me more me than 20 years ago and a Halloween costume I made myself, because you never know when you might want to be a flapper again. 

So when do you clean out your closet? Apparently for me, I need to do this soon. Not only do have way too many clothes that I don’t wear, but I have boxes I never opened from my move over 12 years ago. There are shoes I no longer wear and a box full of scrap-booking tools, stamps, special papers, ink from the time I decided to scrapbook and make my own cards. I think I have about 20 different purses on the top shelf. You could almost do an episodes of Hoarders in my closet alone. Okay, so maybe it’s not that bad. I did, however, find a few gems, my first Polaroid camera, a whole stack of record albums, one of my first cell phones. Which, I believe we referred to them as car phones, even though mine was never physically installed in my car. 

Someone once told me, that you should put the clothes you no longer wear in a special spot in your closet and if you don’t wear them for a year, then you get rid of them. I like that idea and I think I may take it a step further by removing a piece of clothing from my closet for every new piece of clothing I bring home. This should help the clutter that is building in my closet. At the very least, I’ll save money on hangers.