Day 7-Gaining Momentum on Letting Go

Today was the first day in my 31 days project that I felt excited about what I was doing.  I hadn't made enough progress to see any results and I knew that I was mostly putting things away and not really getting rid of much.  Still, I decided to tackle our master closet because our closet is a place in the house I go in and out of a lot.  It had two lives before becoming a closet, first as a back porch for the top floor of the house, and next as the kitchen when our 100 year old house was repurposed to be a two family dwelling.  Our first job when we moved in was to restore the house to be a single family home.  Houses from that era did not have big closets and we had decided not to tear down walls and add on to rooms, but simply to restore the rooms as they were.  Therefore the closets are small.  We decided that the former kitchen area would make a good master closet and laundry room since it was right next to our bedroom.  It's not needing to get dressed or change clothes each day, but doing laundry that most often takes me into the closet area.  There's lots and lots of laundry opportunities with our running clothes that we use several times each week and the south Texas heat.   Those clothes need hung to dry so the space had more of an appearance of a sporting goods store than a closet.  Also the space is big and had  become a catch all when I need to quickly clean other rooms.  Truth be told, our closet was a discouraging mess in spite of a major investment in shelving from The Container Store.  It was hard to find shoes and clothes, I could barely do laundry, let alone sew on the sewing table we had put up, or iron on the ironing board that was in the corner.

I knew this was where I wanted to see some improvement. So I concentrated on a vision of what I wanted the space to look like.  I also remembered more of what I had read the night before  from Julie's book.  I know I have a problem deciding what to get rid of and I knew I needed to get rid of what I wasn't using to make space for what I was using. She recommends an 80-20 rule based on the fact that we use only about 20% of what we own.  "The other 80% is stuff we once used, feel we "should" use, or think we might use again someday."  (p. 54, Organizing from the Inside Out, by Julie Morgenstern.   The more I got down and set out the things I wasn't using, the easier it became to keep going.  I think it may even carry over into tomorrow!  It was not a one day job and I had absolutely no desire to take a before picture (I really don't want to be reminded how bad it was) but I will take a picture tomorrow when I finish this first purge because what I gone done today and will get done tomorrow is exactly what I want to accomplish with my 31 Days of Letting Go.