Confessions of a Clothing Hoarder Part 4

I have an update actually this is two days of work as well as a few extra pictures of our room while it was being painted and things being moved around. It took my husband several months to get the painting done. Being disabled really slows him down. He could have done a few large houses in this time before he was disabled. 

Yesterday I was able to get ride of the cedar rubbermaid tote in front of the closet by sorting, folding, and putting away things. My husband also picked up where the paint can had fallen and spilled on the wall when his dresser was here. You can also see what the right side of my closet looked like before we started. 

As you ca see it looks a lot better now, the floor is all clean. The closet was filled with our new bedding and pillows that we had bought about two years ago as well as tons of clothes we had to sort and go through. I also took everything out of the closet vacumned and then put everything back in on hangers. We were able to get rid of 5 garbage bags of clothes from this closet alone to donate which will be added to the 3 garbage bags of coats to donate that are waiting in our dining room for someone to pick up. 

This is the left side of the closet, as you can see when we opened the door stuff started pouring out. I forgot to mention that I also had a huge stack of magazines I need to go through which are now stacked by my bed. Once we cleaned out the closet we noticed another leak on the closet ceiling but not sure if it was before they fixed that part of the roof and the paint is just flaking, or if it is new so we need to keep an eye on it. There was no damage to anything so we are thinking it is from before they fixed the roof.

As you can see this look a lot better as well. My husband took a razor blade and cleaned off the mirrors. I have no idea why there was nail polish, and halloween colored hair spray on my mirror, or why the kids would even do such a thing, but we were thinking what we thought was nail polish might have been kids craft paint, but we aren't sure. Either way everything came off and once we have some more vinegar I will go over it with a microfiber cloth to make it less streaky. All we had was Fantastic to clean with.

This mess is in front of the Closet system we bought when we moved here, and as you can see it was pretty much a disaster. Of course after we got rid of the plastic frame we found drawers in the two bedrooms we just finished as well as my daughters room. When we asked everyone said there were none, "of course there weren't". 

Like I said our room went through a few changed from the painting, and then our daughter going off to college, we too her dresser. Like most parents our children always had the nice bedding while we did with handme downs we found along the road. We strive to have a nice set someday but until then we continue to reuse and repurpose.

You might notice the dresser goes from having things on it to nothing and then to having stuff on it again. I need to get things in drawers but my Fibromyalgia will only let me get so much done. I was lucky enough to have energy enough to do this two days in a row. I of course didn't make dinner either night, my husband made two simple dinners for us, pizza last night, and ham & cheese wraps tonight. I appreciate his help. 

I had my husband take some measurements for the spaces above the closet organizer as well as our hutch so I can either find baskets later on for them when we have money or if I can get a few rolls of contact paper in a nice pattern I can do some cardboard boxes cut down to size for the tops. One thing about doing reviews, we always have boxes coming in. 

Here are a few more pictures of the wall before it was painted. Believe me we have been here for going on 9 years now and we never got around to painting our room so it still had compound on the walls from the people before us and some from spots my husband went over. But now the room is done, not the ceiling it is just too much for him to do now.

I still have some more to do in this room, and hope to get to it sooner or later. I have clothes to put in drawers, magazines to take down into my office to go through and of course once my husband is done with his dressers, pictures of his dressers. 

The best part about the whole day was being able to put brand new curtains up on the windows, and brand new bedding on the bed. It literally has been sitting my closet for two years, and now is finally being used. I have a plan for new nightstands that my husband thought was awesome. We have most of the supplies but are missing two things to make it happen so I as soon as we can either find those for free or I can find them for an awesome price online that will have to wait. 

By the way I also have another bedding set we bought about a month after this because I wanted to make sure we had two sets in case we needed to change our bedding during the night. As for the old ripped, stained, and worn bedding, the comforter will be used for a blanket for our dog kennel before making it's way to the dump. I hope you like Confessions of a Clothing Hoarder so far and continue to come back and visit.

Bedroom 1

This particular bedroom was my second oldest daughters room. She loved orange so that explains the color. I has been this way since she was in 6th grade and she is now in college. Since she is away we thought we would take the time to clean it up. Before we were able to to our youngest daughters thought it would be a neat idea to fill this room with all of the stuff they didn't want in their rooms. Wrong so what I thought would be easier became a bit harder. We had already pulled out the dresser, bed, clothes, and curtains before and had put the extra mattresses up against one wall before they filled the room with junk.

I wanted to remind my readers we rent so please don't judge the window that were not put in right or other things that the landlord has not fixed yet. We have been here 9 years and the list which we have had from day one just keeps getting bigger and his men only come out to do a few things at a time. Usually when they are here they have to borrow my husband's tools because they don't have the right tools for the job, and they usually break something else while they are here, which gets added to the list on top of everything else. They really need to spend a few weeks here fixing things that are falling apart and then things would be good here for quite a while.

With that being said most houses 1/4 this size cost more to rent so getting someplace smaller doesn't make sense if it costs more. On another note we haven't had any income since June of 2015 so we can only make things better in our own home by repurposing things. Thankfully both my husband and myself are pretty crafty so we do what we can with what we already have.

If you remember the floor was pretty bad before with things that just needed to be sorted, gone through, and thrown out. The bowl on the heater is rat poison made from equal parts flour, sugar, and baking soda. Rats can not pass gas so this kills them. My landlord did put the real poison down in the basement but because we have animals this was put where they would be so that they wouldn't be harmed. Our cats kill the rats but they won't eat them, so they are safe either way. Our Saint Bernard wouldn't touch this mixture unless it was dipped in chocolate so she is safe too, and my girls all know not to touch it. So far the cats and the safe poison has taken out 5 full size rats and two babies in the house where we could dispose of them. We are still waiting to see what happens with the rest.

These were some totes that the girls had filled up with junk, old shoes, etc. The shoes are now in two totes in our dining room waiting to go through but as you can see the room is cleaned out. Below is the inside of my daughters walk in closet. you can see where the wall is falling apart because of a leak in the ceiling for the last two years, but it is cleaned out. By the way you should have seen this house before we moved it in. It was super rough. 

There are two rods in the back side and then one large one that is not pictured. This closet now houses the coats that I went through when we worked on the clothes from the downstairs bathroom/laundry room, which will be gone through again to week out anything that doesn't' fit the girls so they can be passed on to those in need.

This is bedroom one done. We are repurposing a rolling doll house which we have been working on. We actually have two one downstairs and one upstairs will try to take picture of what it looks like so far at some point, and then a rack with bins that my mother in law gave us before they moved which we plan to repurpose. I can't wait until it is done so I can show it off to you all. Unless one of my girls move back home this room will stay like this until we move, but it is ready to be transformed back into a room at a moments notice.

Bathroom Pantry part 2

OK so here is my Bathroom Pantry/ game room/ Linen room

Bathroom Pantry Part 1 can be found here.

So far we were able to fix the drawer for the Dresser, Clean off the shelves although I notice from one picture to the next there is black on one shelf. Since I know it isn't paint I think it may be hair spray for halloween so will have to give that a scrub to see if it comes off. 

Here you can see the built in vanity all cleaned off. My husband took all of the almost empty bottles of shampoo and conditioner and made one full bottle of each from those, recycled the already empty bottles and gave the things that weren't used back to me so I could put them on the right shelves. We have several opened bottles of things in the pantry which are marked to use first before opening newer product so we can get rid of those bottles sooner.

We literally removed everything but the shelves or dresser from the room, then wiped the shelves and put things back. It has been about 8 months now since we have had money to buy shampoo, conditioner, pads, body wash, etc, so I was really upset to see just how many things we were getting low on. My girls really do waste shampoo and body wash, they use enough each time for about 20 people. Time for a lesson in body care.

We moved one shelf to the edge of the room leaving a spot in the corner for 10 boxes of sanitary pads. If you didn't already catch on, yes I am a couponer. Have been for 25+ years now and in times like this when we have no income it really comes in handy.

I had to actually have my youngest daughter go upstairs to get the second picture for me because I had forgotten how messy the floor was before we started. As you can see we couldn't even step in that room before. Now the floor is clean and safe to walk on. It feels so nice when I need something I can actually go back there and find what I need without any problem.

We told the girls if they need something they need to ask us and we will get it for them, and for now on Mommy and Daddy are putting away the items from when we go shopping.

We still have the linen, and game part to do which I hope to update for you soon, until then my goal is to maintain what is already done.

Confessions of a Clothing Hoarder Part 1

I read a post tonight and it got me motivated. Not enough to start it this minute as it will probably take days or even weeks to get done, but I do need to get started somewhere. See I have to schedule everything around my health, mainly my Fibromyalgia which can mess the best intentions up.

I can literally make 100 or more outfits without any of the items being reused other then the bottoms. That isn't counting the clothes that don't fit me. To be honest I still have clothes from when I was in High School, and even though my oldest child is now 25. Some of the clothes are as old as he is. No joke.

So after reading this blog post from another blogger I really need to get on the ball and go through my clothes. I won't even go there with my children's clothes, or heaven forbid my husband's clothes. We need a complete makeover for all of our closets.

One look at my bathroom/laundry room and the wall of  clean clothes piled up in baskets that almost reach the ceiling that I haven't folded, that the kids have to look through to get clothes because I don't have the energy to actually fold and put it all away before they go tearing through it all for their favorite shirt.

As for my husband's and my clothes, well they are overflowing out of the closet, stacked on the dressers, as well as over filling the dressers. I will attach a picture of the before below and then do several other blogs later showing just the work on our clothes alone and if I still have the motivation I will do the girls clothes of course with their help, to at least make it a little easier on myself.

I do know how all of the started with clothes at least for me. I grew up only having a few outfits because my family just could not afford clothes. So as a teenager I had a small income from babysitting neighbors children so I would hit the clearance racks as well as a place called the Purple Barn that sells used clothes near us while growing up to fill in and take over where our family couldn't afford. This started when I was about 12 years old.

We tell our children all of the time how blessed they are to have so many clothes to choose from. When my husband moved from his mother's to our home before we go married he literally moved in with one milk crate, yes the kind that holds 4 gallons of milk. That is all he had for clothes besides what was on his back. So he too when we had our own place got on the clothes wagon because even though he had clothes he never really had much.

So between him and I and then our 6 children we kept getting clothes. Yes I reused clothing from one child to the next but it didn't stop us from hitting great clearance sales and buying more when what we really already had was quite enough. So everything snowballed into what we have now.

I have to come clean in another area of our life too, half of our basement is filled with rubbermaid totes of clothes that are either too small or clothes for my daughters to grow into from their older sisters. I have saved the smaller clothes for my two granddaughters and even the baby clothes for future grandchildren. I will post pictures of this when we get to this. 

We are not quite hoarders just the kind of people who want to be prepared and overly in some cases. I have let go of all of our clothes for our boys unless there are a few we missed down in the basement because both of them have moved out and are on their own. Girls seem to run more heavily with our family and dresses never really go out of style so we hung onto all of those. I even saved shoes of different sizes each size in their own tote.

As you can read, we really need to thin out our basement, dressers, closets, and life. We aren't getting any younger, my health isn't getting better, and our clothes are starting to swallow us up. So join me in the days and weeks ahead on the journey to clean out our closets and take back part of our lives.

I want to be clear that before I worked outside of the home or came down with Fibromyalgia you would never find clothes around the house like this. This is one reason I have decided to get the family on the band wagon to cut back on what we have.