My Work in Progress Closet

In case you didn't already know it, I live in an old house. Recently I noticed that many clothing items that I pulled out of my closet smelled musty.  Our closet is not huge by any stretch of the imagination and it should be able to function optimally for us as we have 2 closets in the basement where we can swap out clothes for seasonal use.  But our closet and dressers were packed full of clothes that we weren't wearing and those clothes were smelling a bit musty. We weren't sure what all was packed in there and we were really only wearing the clothes closest to the door. Something needed to be done and soon!

Blah...needs a fresh coat of paint...

Anyhoo, I have been wanting to paint my closet since forever and I happened to have some Baby Aqua paint left over from when I painted our office a few years ago.  I was happy to use up the rest of this can of paint (I had just enough) to seal up my closet and motivate me to only put back in that pretty closet only the clothes that deserved to be in there. My thinking is that with the entire closet painted - ceiling, walls and shelves - it would be sealed to prevent that musty smell from happening. Also, with careful editing down of the items put back into the closet, I think the airflow might help as well.

While the paint was drying, Scott and I got busy sorting through the massive piles of clothes on the bed. We bagged up 6 bags of clothes to donate and we put the keeper clothes down in the basement to be laundered and put back into the closet again. We also cleaned out our dressers. We found loads of clothes that Emi can wear now so that was a bonus. She inherited many longsleeve Life is Good shirts and OU fleece tops, etc. I think I gave her my Harolds yoga pants too. (I miss Harolds!) I love the way this project turned out for us. Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.

Our shoes, edited down...

Love the new color

I am still in the process of laundering some of the clothes that will go back into that closet and I still need to get some Dryel to get to the dry cleaning portion of the clothes. I think I may actually drop some of the items off at the dry cleaners also.  We are moving in the right direction. For the past week I've been able to wear clothes that I forgot I had and I also scored a cool orange Calvin Klein sweater that Scott was going to donate. I think I will time my donation drop for when I hit Salvation Army up to get a few pairs of pants for David (50% off Wednesdays - can't go wrong there!).

My new to me orange sweater (covered up by my cool owl apron)

Part of my motivation has come from reading on The Working Closet .... and seeing her posts regarding editing down her fall closet. I was happy to find some items that we've had for a while that are back in style again...yea us! Of course, I still think I need more shoes...

[Note: We had another earthquake last night! Another 4.7 and we must be getting used to this because none of us freaked out.]