Tackle It Tuesday #23 - At long last... Cleaning 'my' space.

We've lived in this house for over 4 years now. And for probably about 3-1/2 of them, my closet and dresser have been a cluttered mess - mostly of clothes that no longer fit, various hidden gifts for the girls, and assorted, well 'junk'.

You know things are bad when your closet is full of clothes and yet you never open the door... I'd been meaning to get to this for a while now but honestly didn't feel up to the tackle. And then my dresser became buried by more junk, and the computer cart was moved into the room after we moved the bassinet out almost 2 years ago - and the bedroom became my 'office' as well. A very messy one. Add in a couple of totes of scrapbooking supplies that I couldn't find another home for, and well, you get the idea.

Until last weekend. Well actually, the weekend before - I meant to post this last Tuesday, but found myself flat on the couch sick all day unable to put together a coherent thought, much less a blog post. But this week I am back to myself (appetite and all, unfortunately), so I'm sharing this with you today. I'm very proud of this tackle. :)

And yes, I'm even going to hide my face in shame and share a couple of 'before' photos with you. Don't run away screaming though - the 'after' pictures are coming, I promise!

See all of the clothes in the closet? Guess how many of them actually fit me - right now, at this very moment? Come on - any guesses?

Let me give you a hint. Here are the piles of clothes that I pulled out - that don't fit:

(Just ignore Becca's pillow and the wet spot on our comforter - I had a little audience for part of this and her sippy cup of water was on the leaky side...)

So here is the closet - after. And honestly, even the dresses that are left are either maternity ones that I'm not quite ready to get rid of yet (just in case), plus a few that I'm hanging onto from pure sentimental value....

Quite a difference, huh! I even have room on the middle shelf to put some of the things that were cluttering up my dresser...

Which left the rest of the room looking like this:

And I'm proud to say that over a week later, the room still looks like this! On my side, that is. Now, Ron's side is a completely different room and a different tackle all together... And no, I'm not sharing any pictures of his side! Although maybe that might get him to think about keeping it picked up more often than every month or so. Or when he runs out of clean clothes... :)

So I have 2 large, bulging trash bags full of clothes to get rid of. Casual clothes, tons of professional clothes (from my previous job which had a more formal dress code) - all in a fairly wide variety of sizes and styles. They're all in pretty good shape - Kristi? Mary? Cheryl? Anybody else? You're all welcome to go through them if you'd like...

I look at it this way. I kept most of these clothes for years thinking that I'll lose weight some day and fit back into them. By getting rid of them now, I'm just about guaranteeing that they'll fit me again - I give it 6 months to a year. But even if that's the case - it'll be worth it! :)

What are you tackling this week? And check out other Tackle It Tuesday posts over at 5 Minutes for Mom!