Confessions of a multiple size horder

Multiple times in the last 2+ years I've promised my husband that I'd clean out the closet in the extra bedroom.  You see, I purchased our home before he and I dated and fell in love and moved in together.  In the bgeinning, the extra closet was for my craft storage, the opposite season's clothing, gift boxes and the vacuum.  My husband and I have vastly different ideas of cleaning.  V A S T L Y.  I'm all about touching it once and figuring out a place for it.  He's all about getting it out of sight.  So between my idea of storage and his idea of cleaning, the closet is a endless space of, well...crap.

Since he moved in I've been promising to clean it out.  And for a while it got partially cleaned.  Every spring I'd take out the spring/summer clothes and put them in my closet.  I'd go through the fall/winter stuff and donate anything I hadn't worn (my policy in keeping clothing amounts managable) and pack those away.  I think it happened once after he moved in.  By the next season, the closet was so full that I couldn't get to some of the clothes and forgot that the others were in there.

Until last week.  Last week I came home and Pete was telling me that he had helped me.  I cautiously asked what he meant and he told me to go look at the extra bedroom.  Words fail me.  Half of the clothes that were packed away now created Mount Clothes on the bed and reached almost to the ceiling in the corner.  Every plastic tote that contained clothes was out in the small room and everywhere you looked was, well...crap.

So this weekend I offically cleaned out the closet.  I spent a few hours going through all the clothing.  In fact by the end of the day I had touched all the clothes that I own, including underthings, socks and shoes.  In the end I dontaed 9 large lawn bags full of clothing, 1 of shoes and 1 of purses and belts and random things.  Pete donated about 2 bags of his clothes. 

I had every size from 'misses' large to 3X.  I looked at those bags in the garage and realized that I had been hording old clothes.  Clothes that didn't fit me, clothes that didn't look good on me and clothes that I had never worn because they were too big, too small or just plain bad.  I was horrified. 

This is how my closet looks now:

I didn't take pictures of my shoes, but I am down to one shoe rack and 3 pairs of boots.  My sock drawer no longer overflows into the bedroom floor.  My workout clothes fit into one drawer.  My tanks and other clothes fit into one drawer.  It's all organized.

You know what?  I feel lighter.  I feel like a huge weight has been lifted.  I feel more free.  It's not that I was wearing all those clohtes and I certainly never saw them everyday.  But knowing they were there was like carrying around a bag of clothes on my back every day.  It was like I was giving myself freedom to get bigger because I had clothes to fit that larger size.  I can see everything that I have now and I know where it all is.  The things that I have fit me nicely and look good on me.  I need to bottle this feeling when I go clothes shopping and remember that I don't have to buy things just because they fit.  I buy them because I feel good in them and they look good on me.