Sigh! How can something so small

make me feel so immensely happy and satisfied? I bought a $25 shoe rack from Wally World and it made my Sunday night! Especially after a certain team (who shall remain nameless failed) to do ANYTHING remotely wonderful to please me...

Our closet is ridiculously small. And we seriously don't have that many clothes or shoes. It is small for ONE person, muchless the two of us who share it.

I cleaned out my closet around this time last year but failing to find something to organize our shoes resulted in this...

which is always a fabulous look. After I purged 4 pairs of loafers (who needs that many loafers?!), a pair of worn-once wedges, some old slippers and 3 pairs of flip-flops our shoes looked like this

A bonus is that the useless old shoe shelf I had on the floor before fit perfectly on the top of the closet to lend a little organization to my bags, wallets and purses. It's not perfect and I can't wait to buy an entire closet kit to really deck this baby out, but for now, it's loads better (although doors would be nice)!

Are you organizing anything at your house? Are you buying lots to do it or trying to work with what you already own? Any good tips to share?

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I am purging, boy am I ever purging.

This weekend I worked on my bedroom closet. I thought it was fitting, since I have also been purging myself of some extra LB's since January and this week I crossed the 20 pounds lost mark!

Unfortunately, one of the things that comes with a small ranch house is small bedrooms with small closets. No such thing as a "master bedroom with walk-in closet and en suite" around here!

I share a barely double closet with my husband and typically, it looks like a bomb went off in there.

I have so many different sizes of clothes, I could start my own resale shop! I don't know why I hang on to this stuff. I guess fear I will need it some day or something? Well, I am tired of hanging on to things that don't fit- I am not going to live my life worrying that I will gain weight again. I have worked hard and am staying confident that I will no longer need those larger sized clothes.

I think I am also past needing to hang onto things that I've had since pre marriage and children (15+ years!) I am NOT going to wear that dress or those shoes any time soon.

I am ridding myself of this mound.

Which when neatly folded amounted to this

Which filled 4 kitchen trash bags and then some to the point of stuffed- which will be donated to Salvation Army.

I also cleared out my dresser drawers, but forgot to take a "before" photo. Here are the after shots of the cupboards in my dresser

I swapped out my heavy winter duvet for my lighter weight quilt, which freed up some of the upper shelf space in the closet.

I have a new home for my extra blankets inside this chest.

I scored these organizers from my neighbor's trash pile (yes, I'm a picker, but that's fashionable these days, isn't it?!)

I love that my sweaters won't topple over and fall on my head every time I reach up for one.

My LL Bean tote bag holds all my smaller hand bags and wallets while the pink quilted beach bag (made by my friend Maggie at Maggie's Handcraft Studio) holds all my bigger purses so I can swap out easily and keep everything accessible.

I still need to come up with a better shelving system for all the shoes on the floor, but at least with the random junk sorted out, it is tidied and I can find the shoes I want without shoving things about while sitting on the floor rooting around like a truffle hog!

And the best parts of this process are:
1. The organizing didn't cost me a dime!

2. I have room to put in some new clothes for the newly sized me!

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