Happy Sunday, friends! Last Sunday, some of my bloggy friends and I started a new series following Marie Kondo’s book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” where we shared our visions for this process and what our plans were.

A Journey to Sparking Joy:

Anderson & Grant
Making it in the Mountains
DIY Passion
Dwelling in Happiness
Zevy Joy
Cupcakes & Crinoline
Lost in the Found
The Happy Housie

Today, we are sharing all about our tidying up the clothes from this past week.

Y’all, I’ve got a LOT of clothes. A lot. I didn’t even realize I had so many clothes until 2/3 of them were on the bed in donation piles! Yikes. But I gotta say, it felt good to get rid of so many of them. The process wasn’t fun while having clothes strewn about eeeeeeverywhere, but the end result brings me joy. And for that, I succeeded!

This is a peak at one of my dresser drawers before I went through it all. Every single drawer was bursting at the seams, and I literally would have to push the clothes in every time I closed them. And folding? Pshh, there was no folding. I mostly stuffed them in where they’d fit! Not pretty (or practical) at all.

Let’s start with my process. Marie suggests taking ALL your clothes and throwing them in one big pile. She then suggest tackling categories, such as pants first, then jackets, then shirts, etc. I sort of followed this principle, however instead of taking all my clothes out at once, I took out categories. My bed just isn’t big enough to hold that many clothes!! So for example, I took out all my “bottom” clothing; pants, shorts, skirts, etc, and threw them on the bed. I held every piece as Marie suggests, thinking whether or not it brought me joy. In some cases, it wasn’t even a matter of whether or not it brought me joy, it just either didn’t fit or was holy/stained. After I had tackled just a couple of clothing categories, I already had several piles of rapidly growing clothes.

Just after I went through the above piles, My donation pile (below on the right) far exceeded the pile I was keeping (on the left.)

I continued bringing out different categories until everything had been gone through. This was no quick process, it took at least 2 hours to go through everything.

Then came the task of putting everything away. This was the hard part! In Marie’s book, she suggests not folding and stacking clothes one on top of each other, because you’re unable to see what you’ve got. Makes sense, right? She tells us to fold them and stand them up, so you can see every shirt that you have when you open your drawer. She’s totally right, it makes it so much easier when searching for a certain shirt! The method worked great for my tank tops.

However, I wasn’t able to get my dressier shirts folded and standing in a way that they’d stay. That might take some more practice. To get my tank tops to fit like this, I folded them in half lengthwise (hot dog style, if you’re a teacher!) and then folded each end inwards in thirds so the straps wouldn’t be hanging out. I can’t promise they will stay this way all the time. But I’ll do my best! 🙂

My closet is now three times as empty as it was before. I maybe have 15 items hanging verses the 45+ pieces of clothing as I did before. It’s amazing!! I didn’t take an “after” shot, because I still have some purging to do of my accessories and shoes (which will be next week), but I’ll share one in the weeks to come. If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw a picture like this I posted during my purge last week:

Can you believe all the hangers we had leftover?! Some of these were from my hubby’s purge as well; he jumped at the chance to declutter! Ah, I sure love a man who likes to clean!

I’m not gonna lie, the crazy OCD in me had all of these color coordinated into piles shortly after I took this picture. I couldn’t help it! 😉

My donation pile was insanely huge by the time I was all done, as you can see.

If you can’t tell, that’s about 12 piles of clothes stacked up high on the bed. Guys, that’s probably more than 2/3 of my clothing right there. AHHH!!

What did I learn during this process?

That I have a LOT. OF. CLOTHES. Obviously I knew that, but I didn’t realize the magnitude of such. I probably only wore like 20% of this whole lot. That’s 80% of my clothes that sat in drawers or in the closet for at least the last year, totally unused or unworn. This baffles me! It really made me reflect on why we feel the need to buy clothes when the majority of them probably never get worn. I don’t know how many times I bought a shirt just because it happened to be 70% off. I’m realizing I don’t actually buy clothing that bring me joy, I buy clothing mostly because they’re on sale or clearance. I love finding good deals! But, good deals don’t equal joy in the long run. From now on, I’m going to be so much more intentional about my clothing. When I buy clothing, I’m going to make sure they actually make my happy and that I like how I look in them, rather than worrying about if they’re on clearance.

I really feel so much lighter after just the clothing purge. I love going into my closet and only seeing sweaters and jeans I absolutely love and feel good in, rather than clothes I feel guilty about not wearing. It’s even boosted my confidence! Who would have thought a mega-purge could do such a thing?

So friends, I encourage you; if you aren’t joining us or following along in this journey, you really should be! It’s truly life changing, as Marie Kondo says it is. If you’d like to join our journey to spark joy in your life, you can get Marie’s book on Amazon (affiliate link), and use the hashtag #sparkingjoy on social media.

Don’t forget to visit my bloggy friend’s pages, and see how their clothing purge went this week! Be sure to come back next week, as we tackle all our accessories!

Have a fabulous week, sweet friends!

(I link up at these fun parties!)