Keep, Toss, Give, Donate

'Kay remember when I talked about this past weekend (read here)
when Jane came and helped me organize?
Well here is the post all about that :)

Don't "they" say that we only wear about 20% of our closet
which means I've been keeping way too many things for no reason.
AND I had a huge bag of clothes from Singapore/Florida that I needed to go through.
I hadn't gone through them yet for no particular reason except for having to study for tests and really for avoiding the cold hard reality of the situation.
Isn't unpacking always the worst part of a journey?

So here are some "before" shots of the mess.

We decided I would have categories and try not to have more than 5 items in a category.
(Don't worry I had a lot of categories).
I have kind of a hard time getting rid of clothes.

First we established the rules.
I had to get rid of it (Toss, Give, Donate) if the article of clothing didn't fit, was stained, or was ripped/ruined.
Toss= it was garbage because it was ruined or stained.
Give= something specific to give to someone specific.
Donate= give it to charity/Salvation Army etc.
Jane added another rule and that was no mini skirts because it wasn't appropriate anymore (for the record I had 7 that fit in that category)...see.

Hmm they sure don't look that short to me...maybe some perspective?  How about some with the cutest dog in the world (okay I'm totally biased obviously!)

Oops that's a midlick shot...lets try again...

That isn't very "perspective-y" okay here is a running shoe of mine I wear a 7.5 running shoe/regular shoe 7. 

Maybe they are short.  Uhhhh why don't I just get rid of these things because clearly they aren't professional and I'm getting way too old for fun clothes like this.  They still fit but Jane argued they were WAY too short.
The plaid skirt on bottom row is what I wore the night I met Spencer in Korea (you can read that here).
 The blue/purple one in the top row is what I wore to play softball when I played on my class team in Texas (because CLEARLY everything I know about softball I learned from the movie "A League of Their Own".

Here's a shot of my final Donate pile. 

There are 8 skirts, 7 pairs of shorts, 3 dresses, 9 pairs of pants, and 27 tops (tees/tanks/blouses).

I really only had one thing that I wanted to "give" and that is a pair of unworn tags still on snowpants for my bestie Quinn in Winterpeg (for obvious reasons).

Clearly my dog also has a hard time letting go of clothing.

Here is how Jane kept track for me for the things I was going to keep.  We were trying to limit it to 5 items or less per category.

Clearly my biggest problem was the Casual Dress Category I had 17 and I just couldn't get rid of them.  I love dresses and I could live in dresses (weather freaking permitting of course!)

 So Jane let me hang on to all 17!  As long as I tried to go through them again soon and do the 1 year backward hanger rule.  You know the one where you put all your hangers in backwards (like hooking out toward yourself) and if you don't wear them in a year they have to go.

Now I admit most of the reason that I needed someone to help me was because of this dress.

The dress I wore on my pseudo-wedding day.
The dress I vowed to spend the rest of my life with Spencer.
The day I wish I could erase.
As soon as I pulled in out of the bag I burst into tears.
Ever patient and strong Jane said, "well what do you want to do."
And I just shrugged while the tears turned into ugly cry sobbing.
She said, "well you can keep it but it is probably attached to bad memories and will you ever really wear it again?"
I sobbed out "no."

It felt like such a blow to the heart.
It cut straight to the bone.
Gosh sometimes the hurt comes out of nowhere.
I haven't even begun to think about the real actual wedding dress that is ordered and should be arriving any day now in Canada.  The one that will be stored in a giant box and I will try to avoid the moment that would kind of be like in the Sex and the City Movie where she mistakenly comes across it.
So if you notice the pseudo wedding dress isn't in the pile...yet.
I'm going to get rid of everything on Saturday.
I need to get rid of the dress.
But for some reason I have it haning in the closet (buried in the back).

So here is an after shot of the closet.

It is definitely not as good as some of the super amazing organization and closet redo I see on other blogs.
I know it doesn't look like much but its slowly coming together and hopefully changing area codes too.
It is at least a step in some kind of direction. 
And a time to get rid of some things that are just a pull into the painful past.
I'll keep you posted.