Yesterday I spent the day with my friend, cleaning out her laundry room. Nancy is a self admitted hoarder but before you get a picture in your head from a TV show let me say that her home is beautiful. Nancy hoards where no one can see it and she doesn’t have any trash, everything she has is good quality, in good condition, she just has a lot of it.
We started in her laundry room which made me drool. The room is about twelve feet by thirty feet and has three huge closet off of it. There was plenty of stuff to organize it just no real organization. On one wall she has four floor to ceiling shelving units. They were all full, of bedding. I couldn’t believe the number of sets of sheets she had for each bed in the house. We talked about having three, one set on the bed, one in the laundry and one on the shelf.
I was able to get her down to about five sets for her bed, there must have been fifteen. Her church will benefit as they are all going to the church yard sale. Next there were comforters and mattress protectors. We culled through those.
Next was the tablecloths. Nancy decorates her house for every season and every holiday, but she had at least four table cloths for each and only one table. She kept her two favorites for every occasion and got rid of the rest.
Once you pare down what you have too much of it is easier to enjoy what is left. I taught her how to fold the sheets so everything is contained in one pillowcase. This looks neater on the shelf and they don’t tumble over. We found a plastic bin to put all the tablecloths in so they don’t fall over and create a mess again.
There were tons of clothes to go through and she did an excellent job. Nancy has more clothes than ten women but she was able to let go of a lot of them.
We worked on her holiday decoration closet which was so full that putting things away was a nightmare so they didn’t get put away. After we went through all the decorations and got rid of the ones she hasn’t used in years we allocated a shelf for each holiday or season.
Organizing the seasonal stuff was fun and now Nancy can walk in that closet and get her hands on everything she needs to decorate for a holiday instead of having to dig through everything.
We got a lot accomplished but still have more to do. Nancy easily has three hundred pairs of shoes, I’m not exaggerating, that may actually be an understatement. Our next job is to go through the shoes and find a way to organize them that makes them visible so she can see immediately what she has.
I’ve been on Pinterest looking for shoe organizing ideas, they have lots of good ideas that we will implement next time.