More Shoes?

Rose was quite taken by my shoe sorting and arranging the other week and wanted to join in.  So here are 11 of her 12 pairs of shoes (her indoor school shoes are at school so not included in this picture).

She's cheating a bit because she pinched 3 pairs of old sneakers out of the donate pile in the garage so she can look like she's all carefree and bohemian with no need for possessions.  Nothing is further from the truth believe me.

She is getting rid of 3 pairs of sneakers (that are too small, I'm sure that doesn't count) and 2 pairs of sandals.  Here's her newly amended shoe selection.

This slimline selection will not last long as I owe her a pair of birthday boots and we'll be off to the store for snow boots soon.  Winter lasted so long last year that the soles of her old ones wore right through.  In April I resorted to filling the holes up with silicon bathroom sealant to try to keep us going for a bit longer.  This technique didn't work for me, if anyone out there has any tips for prolonging the life of a pair of well loved shoes please tell.

Drowning in Gloves

The front hall closet is home to baskets and bins of all the hats, mitts and other paraphernalia that help keep us warm, dry or shaded when we go out.  Everyone was available to help at the weekend so we changed over ball caps for toques and went through the giant box of winter stuff that vacations in the spare room closet in the summer.

I'm starting with a list of everything I found in all the closets.  There may be more that I've not found yet lurking under beds and in other forgotten corners but this is plenty for now.

• 26 toques (see this post for definition of toque if you're not Canadian)
• 38 pairs of gloves
• 9 neck warmers
• 11 baseball caps and summer hats
• 4 pairs of earmuffs
• 4 scarves that don't belong to me

That's a total of 91 items of outerwear between the 4 people living in this house.  These statistics suggest that I have 2 problems.

1. I don't seem to be able to pass a bin full of bargain Thinsulate gloves without buying at least 2 new pairs.  This goes for tiny stretchy ones in all different colours too.
2. I like to knit and have a knitting-itchy-hats-for-children-who-don't-really-want-one habit, might be in training to be someone's grandma.

If it's neither of these things then i think there might have been an outerwear breeding programme in the cupboard.

I found these tiny gloves that belonged to Jacob when he was 4, not sure if he's going to wear them again.

To illustrate the extent of my glove-retention issue here's a picture of the rest (except for the pair in Rose's school bag).

We've gone through it all and got 3 bags all packed up and ready to be donated to people who need warming up this winter but somehow there are still 62 items.  I could blame it on Rose who insists that she NEEDS 8 winter hats but really its me and my glove thing.  I've got 8 pairs in the closet and 6 'just in case' upstairs.  I think I need help!

I've reread this post and it has struck me how ridiculous it is that I own 14 pairs of gloves just for me, I shall endeavour to cut that further to 7/8 before I get to the thrift store.  I might regret it when the apocalypse comes and there is a world glove shortage but for now I'll probably be OK.

Where to start?

* * This page, in fact this entire blog, is under construction. Forgive the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors* *

As we are reaching the seasonal changeover for outerwear I've decided to start my organising journey in the coat/shoe closets and yes, there is an 's' on the end of that closet. We have three of them and yet we still have 6 feet (tee hee) of boot mats by the front door. There's got to be some decluttering mileage in that.

My plan, which will be the method for all my organising efforts over the next few months is as follows...

• Empty each closet
• Give it a jolly good clean out
• Put stuff back in, hopefully less than I took out
• Get rid of anything that I don't put back in

Easy!

Over at A Bowl Full of Lemons, which is an excellent blog with lots of very good tips for a clean and tidy home, this is week 4 of the very excellent 2018 14 week home organisation challenge. As the name implies I think that this is supposed to be achieved in 1 week.

Mmm.

I shall leave you with a before picture of each closet and be back on Friday with an update.

This is the hall closet by the front door. It doesn't look too bad right now does it but I am really not sure whats in those red and brown baskets.

This is the other hall closet. It doesn't look like there's much in there right now does it.

And this is the coat closet in the spare room/office. Needless to say this closet does not get opened much and I could find almost anything hiding in the back.

Forgive the terrible photos, it was a miserable day today but if I keep procrastinating and waiting for everything to be perfect I'll never start this thing.