My Journey To Minimalism: Decluttering my entry closet

Decluttering my entry and entry closet. Doesn't sound too hard right? Not much there to organize, so I thought.

Our front closet is where majority of ours shoes go. I try to "Organize" it every few months but it always seems that it is overflowing with shoes, hats, coats, and random items all year long. So, to minimize, I followed a few things:

1. We need 3 pairs of shoes: Sandals, Tennis shoes and dress shoes.

This obviously will change throughout the year when weather changes, and with 5 of us in our family I added some wiggle room. I have winter boots for all of us that are pushed to the back. We obviously wouldn't be wearing those in the next 3 months, but we WILL be using them in the winter, and we don't have the money to buy new ones. One reason to do this was to save money, and that wouldn't be a money saver. But, 3 pairs of shoes, Sandals, tennis shoes, and dress shoes.

My husband LOVES shoes. He has a (Small) collection of shoes. This is one area where there is NO wiggle room for him. And, seriously, he wears all his shoes on a weekly basis. He loves tennis shoes and has about 8-10 pairs... and wears them all. So, his shoes are off limits. But, I did clean out some old ones of his that haven't been worn in about a year.

3 pairs of shoes per person sounds like nothing, but that's at least 15 pairs of shoes in that small closet. With a family of 5, that adds up. It may not look super organized, but it is definitely minimizing our clutter.

Before decluttering the shoes!

2. Each person only needs 1 hat (Except my husband, he has 2)

The next step was to clean off the coat rack (Which is minimal in July) and the shelf above. How did we accumulate so many hats? I narrowed it down to one hat per child, because they only have one they like anyway, and put the rest in a donation box. On the top of the closet was also soccer shin guards (Which will be used in the fall, and we have a tiny house so there is no where else to store them), work gloves, and seasonal door decorations (I have one small door decoration for each season and store them there...again, small house, not a lot of storage). Coats that don't fit any of us were added to the donation box and I kept the two umbrellas because those are used on a daily basis when the kids go to school in the winter. We now have room for each of our coats to hang in a few months and place to put our hats when we come inside.

Coat rack and shelf before

I always think of myself as an organized person, but I realized I was just moving my clutter from one place to another, making it look nice in pretty stacks and cute boxes and I was accumulating more every day. I kept having to tell myself not to put things back because "Someone may need this, someday" or "We were given this from so-and-so" or "I got a really good deal on this!". No. If it's not being used, I'm getting rid of it. There is no reason we need 10 hats in the closet when there are only 5 of us. Especially when majority of them didn't fit. It feels good to not "Organize" the clutter but to actually get rid of the clutter. I don't think I will miss a single article that I got rid of.

After

Obviously, with 3 kids and 2 adults in the house, it's not going to look completely "Minimalistic". There is still lots of stuff in a tight space. But, getting down to a third of what was shoved in there, feels so good. I can now just grab my shoes and go.


ENTRY WAY

The entry way in our house is connected to the front closet. The entry never really gets too cluttered, BUT we do have a chest on the floor that I shove stuff in and on. I completely cleaned it out. I left a couple photo albums and picture frames that I don't have a place for right now, but other than that, it's completely cleaned out. The top is cleaned off and the only thing is envelopes that need to go out the next time I leave the house. This area will be used for keys, purses, and things that need to be grabbed before we head out of the house.

Completely clean and rid of clutter

This first step was a pretty easy one. Getting rid of shoes and hats and items we haven't used in the last year was pretty simple. My box of donations is full and my trash can is overflowing with clutter. Things are leaving my house and not coming back. Minimizing the clutter just in these two places has made me feel calmer already.

On to the next room: The living room. Eek! This one may be a little harder. Stay tuned.

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