A short post to show the fruit of our hard work! We would love to see YOURS!

Use our hashtag #freshminimalism so we can see what you did in your home, too!

Remember the before:

I also did my husband’s and children’s closets.

Before cleaning out my closet, I felt like I never had anything to wear. I didn’t like the majority of my clothing and a lot of it was uncomfortable. I could hardly fit anything into my closet it was so cramped!

After:

Now, I have made $100 selling my nicer clothing on Poshmark (woohoo!), I highly recommend getting on there and making back a few bucks.

My husband’s friend did a warm clothing drive for shelters in New York and took all our warmer items like boots, coats, sweaters and the like. If you have a lot of warm things, call your local shelter and ask if they would like donations!

Giving our old or extra coats away and the children’s winter boots and things, knowing they would go to someone who needed them and may be out on the street in the cold, made it a lot easier to give them away. I doubt I would have donated as much had it not been for that.

This is what we donated to the clothing drive.

Honestly, I’m a little disgusted with us. I didn’t think we had all that much!

What’s worse, we actually DON’T have that much (compared to many). When I think about our materialistic culture, bleh! I’m all for nice things, but I don’t see that as being the same as a gluttonous consumer. I would much rather have one beautiful expensive sweater than thirty cheap ones.

Here is my closet after round one of the purge (sorry for the weird angled photos but it’s a tiny room!

If you’re just joining in, you can start cleaning out your closet here!

It’s now been a whole month of living with my cut-down closet and I am still slicing it down bit by bit. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to replace the worn items in the near future but until then, I’ll be shopping smart, slowly and will say no if it isn’t on my list (unless I LOVE it to the point where I cannot live without it #firstworldproblems).

Closet Gear

I replaced all my hangers as a treat for all the hard work. What a difference it makes! Silky tops aren’t slipping off anymore, nothing is getting weird bumps on it and it all hangs much more uniform.

I bought different hangers for different items… because that’s why there are different hangers.

Cheeky, I know.

Hangers with non-slip rigged grips

Jacket hangers for my husband and I

Padded hangers for delicate clothing

Wooden hangers with strap notches

The rigged hangers are AMAZING. I didn’t buy enough. Along with the ridges, they have curved ends so the clothing hangs perfectly. They even work to hang delicate, long sweaters without bumps.

Laundry and Clothing Care

The other thing I did was commit to taking care of my knits better. I want my clothing to last for a long time! In the past, I’ve just thrown my sweaters in the wash and laid them out anywhere I could to dry. But if I’m going to be buying less, but better quality clothing, I need to learn to take care of it.

So I purchased wool shampoo, a sweater comb, mesh bags for delicates and drying racks as per recommendation by a YouTuber. I’m already so happy I bought the drying racks. WOW! The bags are also great, at the very least I can throw things into them that I don’t want my husband to put in the dryer!

The wool shampoo I am still unsure about but it’s got excellent reviews. Do you use wool shampoo on sweaters? Is it worth it? I’ve linked what I bought below, the mesh bags I listed are cheaper than the ones I bought!

How’s Your Clean-Out Progress Coming?

I want to thank those of you who shared your pictures with us of YOUR cleaning adventures! We really love to see them!

If you’d like to share your pics with us, please use #freshminimalism so we can find them and collectively rejoice in your tidiness!

That’s it for January!

I helped my mom with her closet, too. Should have taken a before and after! Darn.

Join us February 4th as we clean out our bathrooms. This one is much easier than the closet so if you’re not finished on your closet yet, not to worry! I’m still working away on my closet but the bathroom should only take a day or two.

I’ll post where my closet is at on my Instagram stories. Until then, stay fresh!