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 ...

Reassure Me I'm Being Reasonable (Or Tell Me If I'm Not)

This is our front hall closet:


It is completely full to the gills. I have some jackets in there, but the majority of the stuff in here is A's. More than half the coat space is his stuff (most winter stuff that is out of season), the stuff on the floor is all his shoes (plus the dustbuster), the stuff on the top shelf is some shopping bags, duffel bags, and other random stuff.

All I want from this closet is to be able to hang a few guests' coats here rather than putting them upstairs in the guest bedroom, and to be able to put the vacuum in here. Right now the vacuum lives down two flights of stairs (we have a split level), and it's incredibly heavy, so the main level doesn't get vacuumed as often as I would like because it's so much effort to get the vacuum up and down the stairs. I'm sick of it.

A refuses to move any coats (or his sports jerseys, he has almost a dozen and they all live in this closet). He keeps all of his shoes here instead of in the closet upstairs (and he has the better closet). He refuses to move the duffel bags down to the basement for storage, even though we only use them every few months.

I am fed up, and I think I'm putting my foot down.

We have a half-empty cedar closet in the basement that has more than enough room for all of his coats and jackets. If he picked out just four that he wanted to keep upstairs for the season (with the rest all still readily available), that seems like it should be enough. I have a couple, E has a couple, we still have half a closet for guests. His sports jerseys should live in his closet, not this one. Same goes for his shoes (especially since mine have to all live in my closet). There is no reason the duffel bags need to be up here. I want room for my effing vacuum, and I don't think that's too much to ask!

A is going to fight me on this one, I know it, and it's going to be a battle. So if you think I'm being unreasonable, or if you see some other solution, please tell me. He doesn't get back from Taiwan until next Thursday, so I have time to consider this.