Airing My Dirty Laundry

First a few things unrelated to my dirty laundry: My friend Cheryl came over and took away my sister's chaise after she saw my blog about wanting rid of it. Thank you Cheryl! If it doesn't work in her house, she's donating it to her daughter's school.

While she was over she mentioned how this blog has inspired her to tackle her garage, which is currently serving as her office, laundry room, and craft room (she also mentioned how much she wants Jackie's Super Woman costume, ha).

Unfortunately, there is so much work for her to do on the garage that it's daunting. I reminded her that while a lot of the girls blogging here are tackling and finishing major projects, the original intent was to see if just throwing/donating/recycling 10 things a day would have an impact on our homes and lives. I've already noticed that instead of piling up papers that make their way into the house, I now make an immediate determination as to whether the item is trash and most things are going directly into the trash or recycling. Yay me!

My daunting project is my laundry. I have so much clothing, most of it old or ill fitting. Coupled with my severe dislike of folding and putting clothes away, it has gotten WAY out of control. WAY OUT OF CONTROL!!! The pictures you are about to see are the most embarrassing thing I will ever share.

This is my laundry room. The clothes and towels on top and in the basket are clean and need to be folded and put away:
This is my laundry cart. The bins are full of dirty clothes that need to be washed:
This is an extra bedroom we don't use. It has both clean clothes on the floor and dirty clothes. At this point, I'm not sure which are which and will probably have to just wash them all:

And this is my shame of shames. This is my closet with the floor covered with shoes and dirty clothes:
It starts off in a small pile, and then I rummage through the pile for things to wash, and then the pile is everywhere, so I just start taking my clothes off and throwing them on to the floor. Why not, it already looks like this? And Morgan was upset with her husband. Imagine how my husband feels about me?

But you have to start somewhere, so I sat down on my closet floor and tacked the clothes behind the closet door, and the bottom two drawers of my dresser, finishing one load of laundry and gathering the following 10+ items:

To be donated:

2 pretty sun-dresses that don't currently fit

1 ugly brown sweater I should never have purchsed

1 pair black biker shorts (??)

1 pair gray leggings

1 pair pink Adidas exercise shorts

1 child's jacket

1 child's sweater

1 pair child's pants

5 pair of ill fitting flannel pajama bottoms (I hoard pajama bottoms)

And for the trash:

Old white T Shirt

Old wool sweater
Baby steps ...

There's a chair under there!

This is one of my dumping zones. I wash and fold laundry and stack it right here. Then I dig in it for clothes in the morning and it ends up looking like this:

It took me two days of 15 minutes of work here and there (I'd sort through a lot of clothes in the living room while playing with the boys), but believe it or not, there really was a chair under there!


I was able to move things to my new and improved closet, moved the bench from the window to the foot of the bed, and got rid of lots of clothing to give to CHKD thrift store that benefits the local children's hospital.

Next task: armoire.