This may not be everyone’s favorite subject, but it’s a good time to clean out your closet. Maybe I should have surrounded that sentence with pictures of puppies.

Listen, your closet needs to loose some weight. Because you want to go in and grab exactly what it is you want to wear not the sweater you’re hanging onto from high school, or the 50 cent top you’re refusing to let go of but haven’t worn yet.

Listen, you’ve got to make room for all of the smart purchases you’re going to make this year, so let’s get in there and clean it out! I just did this and OH MY does it feel good.

Here’s a before and after picture to motivate you..

Now here’s how I did it…

Break your closet up into sections and schedule a time to clean it.

I kept putting off cleaning out my closet because I felt as if I needed hours and hours to tackle it. Then I kept thinking I would get to it on a Sunday afternoon, when I have hours and hours. Boy was I wrong about that. If I get the lunch plate off my lap on a Sunday afternoon I consider it an accomplishment.

So what I decided to do was to break my closet into sections: what’s hanging, what’s on top, and what’s on the floor. I blocked out time on a Saturday (when I’m feeling 1,000% more productive) and took one section at a time. This really helped me actually get it done, and it didn’t feel so daunting because I was only going one section at a time. Plus it helped me gain momentum, because once I saw how much I got rid of it made me excited to do everything else.

Take it all out. I mean all of it.

I’ve always heard that you have to take everything out of your closet, and I’ve always rolled my eyes at that. Until this time. It really does make a difference when you take out what it is you’re looking at. This will really help you to see the shirt/blouse/dress and make an informed decision as to whether or not you want to keep. It also really helps you to reorganize when you put it all back in.

I told you I divided the closet up by sections…well I took those sections and made sub-sections (whew this is getting complicated). When I decided to start with what was hanging, instead of pulling out everything that was hanging all at once, I started with my shirts. I went through all of them, pulled out what I didn’t want, then organized what I kept and hung it all back up. Then I’d move to dresses and do the same thing. This helps your bedroom not look like a land mine and again keeps, “OH MY GOSH I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO” feeling at bay. If you have to pause for whatever reason, you’re not left with an explosion of clothes.

Make snap judgments.

For the first time in your life, this is allowed. When you are going through each item it’s best to make quick decisions because that first instinct is what’s right. If you hold onto a shirt for too long staring at it thinking, “I don’t know, I think I’ll wear this again one day.” You won’t. And it will just sit in your closet until the next time I write a blog about cleaning it out.

I now have a clothes mound in my office the size of Justin Bieber’s ego, and it actually makes me very happy. I look at it and think of all the weight my closet has lost, and how much someone else is going to love those clothes! I’ll write follow up blogs about how to determine what to do with those clothes and how to further organize what you put back.

But for now, get in there and clean, clean, clean!!