A Month of Less: The Coat Closet

Today's challenge is the Coat Closet! Now, I'm hoping for your sake that yours is not in as bad shape as mine was - it was a little lot embarrassing. We had so many fabric & plastic bags stuffed in there that it was kind of a shove everything inside as far as possible and then quickly shut the door before everything could pop out again. Except that we also had too many coats in the closet, so every time I tried to shut the door, it jammed on a coat sleeve. *Sigh* WAY past time to clean up that mess.

For me, the biggest things to take care of were A) cutting down on the number of coats & snowpants hanging in the closet, and B) organizing the multitude of bags.

We have a coat rack by the back door, so I sorted the coats & snowpants into A) Wear on a daily/weekly basis and B) Wear once or twice a month, or spring or summer jackets. All of the coats in category B were brought downstairs to the back entry.

The bags were a different matter. I sorted through the fabric bags, tossed the bags with rips, tears, & holes,  washed the rest (am I the only one who forgets about those when I'm doing laundry?), and then put half in the van and half back into the closet. (I have 2-3 kids to carry out to the van and strap into their car seats when I grocery shop - I never remember to take the bags with me!!

The consequence of never remembering fabric bags when grocery shopping is as shown below. Bags stuffed in to bags stuffed into bigger bags.

That takes up a CRAZY amount of space - precious space that I really don't care to waste on plastic bags! I remembered hearing rumours of folding plastic bags into manageable packages, so I did a bit of googling and had the practice down-pat in 2 minutes. It's been a great activity to do while relaxing & watching TV at night. (It's taken a while. I must've had about 75 bags in that closet, minimum.) Want to learn how? Watch the video below!

The fantastic thing about this method is that I can carry a LOT of plastic bags around with me in a ziplock bag in my purse, and it takes up less room than my (large) wallet!

Goals for a tidy, clean, & organized coat closet:

• Sort through coats. Donate those that haven't been used for 2 years, store or relocate those that are not in season, & place at another entry those that are occasional uses.
• Wash your fabric bags & toss any that aren't up to carrying a heavy load of groceries anymore.
• Take all of the shoes out of your closet, then sweep & mop the floor & shelving. Donate any shoes that haven't been worn for 2 years. 
• Take everything off of the top shelf of your closet, sort (donate things that haven't been used lately), & use smaller bins for easier & more accurate access.