simplify to create serenity...

This has been my mantra this past week. I despise clutter and have felt a little overwhelmed with all the "stuff" we have been collecting. My new fave website is simplify101.com and I have just really been wanting to live a bit simpler with less stuff. Babies bring lots of extra "stuff" into our lives plus an older siblings stuff etc. We moved into this house a little over 3 years ago. We were over the moon to be moving into a house with more than 3x's the square footage of our first house. When we first moved in we had furniture for our bedroom and Aiden's, a kitchen table and furniture for the family room. We had an empty living room, dining room and fully finished empty basement. Now we are completely full and lots of extras too! A few months ago I tackled our bedroom closet. 8 bags of clothes later - I still had a lot of clothes I can't remember the last time I wore. This brings me to my first organizational tip of the week. Just like recipe of the week I hope to post an organizing tip to help my family and friends with their lives. So first tip- Take a look at your clothes closet and flip your hangers the opposite way ( the hook part) once you have removed a piece of clothing to wear you turn the hanger back around the normal way. In a few weeks/months you will see the clothes you consistently choose to wear and after 6 months to year a look in your closet and all the backward hangers of clothes can be removed and donated, consigned, given away etc. I am guilty of hanging onto things for years thinking I will fit into it again one day, I spent too much money on it to give it away or my ultimate questions - If I got rid of everything I don't wear in this closet I will only have 5 things hanging in here! But so far I am really enjoying this new system and look forward to another good purge in a few months. Sorry for the lengthy post!