January Decluttering Project: Closet of Doom (Final results)

Of one my goals for 2017 is to give our home a deep decluttering. As I mentioned in my New Year's Goals post,  I want to take a room a month and really give it a good cleaning and decluttering. 

For January, I have chosen my nemesis-- the room/closet off of the bathroom. There is a small room off the bathroom that has become a catch-all storage room. It is a disaster so I have dubbed it the Closet of DOOM. 

Just a reminder, here is the before (taken from the bathroom door looking in, as I could not even walk into the room):

After spending an hour cleaning it during week 1 of January, the closet had transformed to this:

After week 2, the closet looked like this:

After week 3 the closet was looking great. However there were still totes to go through in the corner. There were 5 or 6 totes that were behind the door that hold memorabilia and maybe more clothes.

So that was my starting point. I had about an hour and a half free on Wednesday so I decided to tackle it and get it done. The first thing I did was clean out the top blue tote that didn't have a lid. There were things in there that the kids wanted to keep as keepsakes and needed to be sorted into their totes. So I did that first.

Then I went through each child's tote. I will admit that I didn't get rid of very much in their totes. I did get rid of some artwork that wasn't special and I got about half a bag of blankets and things that I will donate to Goodwill. I am okay with that.

Then it was time to go through the last tote and box that had my stuff in it. The box had cards and pictures from my parent's house. I think my mom saved every card I ever got. I took those to my bedroom to sort through. I threw out almost all of the cards-- I only kept a couple that had notes from my deceased Grandparents and Great-Grandma. I I got a whole diaper box full of papers and cards to recycle. Everything that I wanted to keep out of the tote and box, fit into the box. :-)

There was also a box in the closet that I had Bill go through as it was his hats he has collected over the years, and ties that he used to wear for work. I was extremely proud of him as he only kept a small fraction of the hats and ties and we now have a full box of them to go to Goodwill.

So I can officially say that the Closet of Doom is completely decluttered. It was a process, but one that I am glad that I undertook. All in all I got rid of so much stuff...either through donation or trash.

Here is the final result:

I know everything that is in the closet. I can't believe how much stuff was in there. I knew that it was a lot but I never imagined that it was so much. We took 2 van loads to Goodwill and I still have another box and half a trash bag from this week's final push.

It feels so good to be done with it. I look in the room and I just smile!

Now it is time to plan for the next room....

I have decided for February, I am going to focus on decluttering the Master Bedroom. This should get interesting...