~ TOO MUCH STUFF ~

We have been in our house for a little over 3 years. Doesn't feel like that long, it still feels like we just moved in. We went from a house with 1895 square feet to a house with 3,400 square feet of space. When we moved I got rid of half of my things and let me tell you that I had allot of stuff! I love to collect stuff and working at Hallmark for six years didn't help the situation. Now that I have been living with half the stuff it still feels like too much stuff.

So when you have two guest rooms it's easy to fill them up with stuff. Mainly Christmas stuff, gifts and wrapping papers. I always made sure I had space for company to hang clothes and several drawers for them to use. The bottom drawers I would use for Christmas throws, gifts I would buy throughout the year and other little things.

So getting these rooms ready for my daughter and son-in-law was a challenge. One I really didn't want to face because let's face it, who really likes to clean out closets! But that didn't really matter because it HAD to be done.

After Christmas we bought some containers to make our closet look more organized. My husband worked on his section (picture on the left) and I took a picture of the MESS on my side of the closets. Whatever I had that I didn't know what to do with went there. The red containers are my Christmas ornaments, the boxes have plush and Jim Shore Christmas.

The one guest bedroom with the small walk-in closet needed to be emptied for our daughter & son-in-law along with the closet in the other bedroom which will be their TV room. We also cleaned out a hallway cabinet for linens and the guest bathroom. I would have to say that I think they have more space now then they did in their apt. closets.

So below you will see the finished master closet. We have moved most everything into the closet and even though it's pretty full it looks really organized doesn't it? I still have one shelf with misc. junk on it. (see Skye sniffing the dirty laundry in the basket)

Now I want to keep going and get the rest of my cabinets cleaned out and organized. My bathroom sink area has so much storage yet almost everything in it isn't being used by me anymore. (Yes, I buy way too many things to try on my face, body, hair, etc.) So with some help from my daughter I hope to get the rest of the house totally organized and with that comes freedom!

There is something very freeing about getting rid of the excess clutter and things you don't use. So why is it so hard to tackle these project when you know that the outcome is happiness?

P.S. Today we are going to tackle my bathroom cabinet !!!