The "Toybox" theory of decluttering....

With my washing machine on the blink, I haven't done laundry in a couple of days. That means that our favorite things are all in the wash! :( Sounds like a good time to clean out the closets!

That's the strategy I used for the "toybox" theory of decluttering. When my kids were small, they'd get out a TON of toys and have them ALL OVER the room. I would look at the mess and think, I should get rid of about half of these, so they'd fit into the toybox! One day I realized that the toys that were all over the room were the FAVORITES, and that the toys left in the toybox were the ones that the kids didn't care about. Now I recommend that you let the children play. Let them get out every toy, or at least start to ... and then, once they are quite happily playing with a bunch of toys, you can go through what's left in the toy box and get rid of most of it!

So, now that we have most of our favorite clothes in the hampers now, perhaps it's time to go back and look in the closet. If it's still hanging in there now, it probably won't fit, or was a dated style. Either way, I should get rid of the stuff!