An Epic Spring Cleaning

Have you heard of the book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”?  I feel like it is hard to go anywhere without someone mentioning it and finally – abiet a few years late – I jumped on the bandwagon. One of the perks of blogging is lots of samples of things and I tend to hold on to them thinking “one day” i will use them but after almost four years in my apartment their are samples I moved int eh Summer of 2014 from Brooklyn that are still in the “one day” pile – talk about things that need to go! 

I know this isn’t the right order but I decided to start with shoes and clothes because that is what I have the most of, and goodness, I must say to start it was a bit overwhelming.  I have shoes in so many places in my New York City studio that it took me a while to find them all. In fact, even when I thought I was “done” and took the photo below, I still found a few pairs tucked away afterwards.   By both my Dad and my aunt’s guess they thought I had between 100 and 150 pairs of shoes here though my guess was less as I have been getting rid of some over the past few months.  The grand total came in at 78 and I must say, I don’t think I have ever seen all of my shoes in one place – I mean, who would put flip flops with snow 3boots?  It was a great way to visualize everything before I handled each pair and decided if they gave me joy.  And guess what?  Nearly 30 pairs did not make the cut. 

Then it was onto clothes and boy was this challenging. NOt only was the sheer volume daunting but I had much harder time when I picked up an item dissociating it from the time I got it, who I was with, what a great deal it was, or something sentimental like that which interfered with teh basic question, “does this give me joy”.  I actually had to stop yesterday mid sorting and head to the gym to sweat it out and then came back even more determined, this time armed with color coded flash cards for four key piles; keep, donate, sell, and trash.   After I made these piles the process got underway and the donate pile is so large I actually had to enlist the help of friends to bring it all to be donated! Take a look at the process: 

It was an excellent Spring cleaning and I am excited next weekend to tackle the other objects in my life – books, knick knacks, the kitchen, and some of my catch all / junk drawers. 

Do you do Spring cleaning?