34 Pairs of Underwear

 **UPDATE**
I've moved to ladybugsandlattes.com
You can find this post and more here
***

Even though my house is often a mess (I have this blue-eyed, one-year-old tornado that hangs out in my living room), I am obsessed with organizing. I find pure joy in simple ideas that make cluttered spaces more functional.

I absolutely love organization, but let's be honest, it just causes more stress. For example, I have a full cabinet of plastic lunch containers and it's always a mess with mismatched pieces and everything just thrown in there (isn't that how most people's Tupperware cabinets look?). Well, I organized it and made it awesomely functional – you know, provided I'm the only one who takes the containers out and I'm the only one who puts them away. I may have an extra gray hair now, but my Tupperware cabinet looks immaculate!

So I read about a few ideas that discuss organizing one space in your home each week for a whole year. What a great idea to break apart huge tasks to make them less daunting! I should definitely do this…..if I ever live by myself again. Seriously, there's no way I can keep the baby and the hubs from shuffling around the areas I just fixed. It's just going to stress me out to work on a new area AND maintain every organized space in the home while my loving tornadoes tear it apart at their leisure. Nevertheless, functional and organized spaces sure satisfy my Type A Personality tendencies...and I can always dye my hair.

I decided to create a list of spaces I want to organize and ideas of how to do it well. However, as far as keeping a strict schedule of doing one project once a week – yeah right. If I'm lucky to have a burst of energy big enough (and a naptime long enough) to tackle one of the problem areas in my home, you better believe I'm going to jump on it, regardless of time in between projects.

So yesterday, I got started. I finally did some spring cleaning (in September). All embarrassment aside, this is what half of my closet looked like. You can't see all that much because it didn't open all that much without spewing. I was horrified that after only 3 years of being together, my closet really let itself go. (The rest of the closet space will be disclosed at another time because it's just too appalling to be exposed right now.)

I went through all of our clothes, trying to make enough space to close the closet without using both hands and a foot. I also dreamed of being able to shut the drawers with only one shove. Side note: what made me believe I needed that many pairs of underwear?

An hour and a half later, this overstuffed bag of outdated and shrunken clothing emerged (because I didn't get any bigger – all of my clothes from college shrunk in the wash slowly and it just so happened to coincide with every caramel frappuccino and brownie I consumed). I'm sure every morsel is going to look great on the crowded racks at the Goodwill.

Feeling haughty from the progress I had made, I went back to my closet. Ready to see how great it looks?

Oh. It still looks the same. Crap.
Why didn’t I include the rest in the picture? Nap time only lasts so long and I don't need to embarrass myself twice in the same post. The rest of the closet will be tackled during Week 2…or in my case, the second time I get a long burst of energy thanks to the bottled Starbucks frappuccino in my disorganized pantry.