before and after

another night, another blog post not written because *someone* refuses to go to bed! Sigh, I think we may be entering another bad sleep phase.

But look at my closets!

I wrote about how I'm trying to Zen-ish our home. I'm trying to get rid of all the stuff. The extra stuff: the stuff we don't need, we don't use, the "how did this even get in my house!" stuff.  This vacation both kids are in camp or daycare all day, so I have time to assuage my mommy guilt about that clean.

We live in a tiny home. Not tiny by rural Ethiopia standards, not tiny by New York City standards, but by American standards, very small.  Living space, corner kitchen, two small bedrooms, one office turned into very small bedroom. Three closets. One is full of our clothes. One is full of golf clubs and tools and vacuums and shopping bags and brooms, and the last is full of everything else. Tuesday I cleaned out the everything else closet.

This is what it looked like before (minus, to be honest, about 4 large shopping bags full of tissue paper and gift bags.  Teachers are never short on gift bags!)

I sorted and folded and threw out and re-organized and put away. I found a pair of shoes I'd bought in a too big size for Daniel a year ago and that almost didn't fit him because they were too small.  I found a ridiculous amount of tissue paper. I found a bag of CDs that we've been meaning to sort and get rid of since we moved in (4 years ago!) I found quite a collection of next size up shoes for Lily that I need to remember I have so I don't add more! I found and got rid of the 5 pillow inserts that I've had for 3 years thinking I'm going to make covers for them.

This is what it looks like now:

So much better! Of course, we still have to put the winter coats away in there...

How is your Spring Cleaning going?