Tiny Family Pre-Holiday Closet Purge

While my nine-year-old daughter, Sophia, is lucky to have a large closet, the space seems to invite clutter and piles of toys, linens, and other miscellaneous items. As you can see, it really was in need of some love and attention.

Second before image of messy closet — Our Cluttered Closet

So, with the holidays approaching, it feels like it is time to donate what is no longer needed or appreciated while making space for those new treasures which will be. My goal during this re-organization is to spend ZERO dollars and ZERO cents. I do not want to buy any fancy bins. I don’t want to buy shelving or fancy hangers. I don’t want to spend a DOLLAR at the Dollar Tree. And if we can’t manage that, then we really shouldn’t have all the stuff.

Stuff We Just Can’t Get Rid Of

Because storage space is at a premium in our apartment, I’ve been keeping items that we just can’t get rid of in this closet. This includes the doors from our kitchen cabinets, the plastic valance from our now hidden vertical blinds in the living room, and a spare vacuum cleaner. Part of my mission during this project was finding new homes for these items in our apartment.

Kitchen cabinet doors in closet — Kitchen cabinet doors and other miscellany

A Blank Slate

My first order of business was to take everything out – all the clothes, all the toys, even the bike that was hiding under a sheet in the back of the closet.

Here we have our empty closet. While it was empty, I took a few minutes to clean and freshen the space. I vacuumed the floor and wiped down all the surfaces. This part always feels so satisfying to me.

Our Empty Clean Closet — Empty and Clean!

Clothing First

With the closet cleaned out, we started the task of sorting the large pile of stuff occupying Sophia’s bedroom floor. I find clothing relatively easy to sort through and we accomplished this part of the task in about an hour.

Our giant pile of stuff to reorganize — The Pile!

Out of Season Clothing First

Because we are now heading into winter, I began by re-hanging her summer clothing toward the back of the closet. I was also careful to hang the clothing and hangers in the same direction which contributes to a sense of organization and calm. I also hung clothing in rough categories including pajamas, dresses, t-shirts, long sleeve shirts, sweater/sweatshirts, bottoms, swimwear, and out of season clothing. Any clothing Sophia has outgrown were added to the donate pile.

Hangers facing one direction — Tidy Hangers Facing the Same Direction

At nine-years-old, however, the toys and games were trickier to sort. And this task required the participation of my daughter. It wasn’t my intention to throw away anything meaningful, important, or special to her. So, we took the time to be careful and thoughtful about these things. In the end, my daughter ended up decided to keep most of her toys. However, the re-organization was still worth it as the closet is much neater and feels more spacious.

Storing a Bicycle in an Apartment

Finding a place to store a bicycle in an apartment can be challenging. Instead of cluttering up valuable floor space, I securely mounted the bike to the wall above the wire shelving.

Our Donate Pile

This is the pile of items we ended up donating at the end of our purge.

The Final Result

A clean and organized closet!. We’re really happy with how it turned out, especially as we were able to use what we already own. We didn’t spend any money on organizational stuff!