Out of the closet

So I spent the past weekend cleaning, specifically cleaning and organizing my walk-in closet. I wish I could cop and say the picture above is my closet but unfortunately my closet doesn't have that much space nor looks as glamorous. Nevertheless I spent some time this weekend really going through things and seeing what I had and what I had forgotten....  Actually under the guilt and pressure from my monkey I spent an entire afternoon sorting and organizing. The first thing "The General"  did was haul out several hangers full of clothes, drop them on my bed and had me try on clothes that I've had since college but haven't worn nor had she ever seen me in in her life-time. (she'll be 11yrs old in a little over a month). So feeling pretty good after hitting the gym earlier that morning and having eaten only fruit for breakfast I felt game to try on some clothes. Wow, it's amazing what things you find when you start going through all your clothes. I found several circa 1980's Janet Jackson jackets & matching leggings when I was going through my own "Rythm Nation/Control" period. I also found a couple big over-sized shoulder-pad jackets with big neon flowers and numerous black cat suits that I bought in hopes of wearing when I lost that last 15lbs...

So regretfully I let go of some pretty cool but dated clothes. Of course my daughter snagged a couple things that she liked and we bagged the rest in two large shopping bags....  dresses, jackets, blouses, jeans, dress pants and skirts. I felt a bit guilty that about 30% of these things still had the tags on them and some others had only been worn once or twice... But in truth I actually started feeling good about letting a lot of this stuff go. After about a two hours of this I was ready to call it quits and start putting my remaining clothes back in the closet and make some lunch... but nope the General decided that shoes, purses and accessories were next on her list. So with the single-mindedness of my Monkey pushing me I started in on the task of going through all my shoe boxes and accessory drawers.   ...another 90mins later she was bagging up 30 pairs of shoes (12 pairs of those shoes were brand-new and unworn) and 11 purses, those too were in various stages of wear. I felt a little sad, very wasteful and somewhat relieved getting through all the shoes & accessories and bagging and donating what I (uh what the General) had gone through. So close to 4 hours later my closet was thinned out by a third and Goodwill had plenty of good things bagged and ready to go through.

Despite feeling a little nostalgic for some of the things I let go, part of my reward was finding several pairs of dress slacks & leggings I had bought at The Limited and would get around to wearing when I lost the "baby" weight finally fit.  It was a great feeling slipping into these expensive well tailored pants and easily zipping them up and seeing them hang so nice on me. It made all the time and sweat spent this last 4 1/2 months at the gym worth it! My monkey saw me looking sad as we were loading up the car with the bags of clothes & shoes and she reminded me that cleaning out closets, giving away clothes or just throwing out worn things every once in awhile was a good way to lose weight as well, and she was right...