Cleaning 🧹Out the Closet: Making Space

I happened to come across my closet organizer tucked away deep in the corner of my closet. I purchased it many months ago and never did anything with it, until the day I happen to come across it randomly. So, I unpacked it and somehow managed to make just enough space in my stuffy closet to fit it in. My closet is a double-decker with two hanging rods stacked on top of each other to accommodate as much clothing as possible. The original design of the closet was a single-decker and I converted into a double-decker a few years ago after getting the idea from a Pinterest post. I had moved back home from my apartment after finishing fellowship and had more clothes than I can fit into my new room. I had so many clothes in my closet that I had to shove the hanging clothes to get a few inches of space to find a dress. I had a lot of clothes, but I could never find the one I wanted or needed. I had the same problem with my dresser. My dresser was so full, sometimes I couldn't close it completely. It was insane. But, when I needed a pair of shorts, I could never find it in my dresser. 

Now I have a hanging organizer which had compartments, I started to organize my shoes into a few compartments, my scarfs, and accessories into others. It was nice. When I needed my scarf or shoes, I could easily access them. The good feeling led me to slowly go through my closet and dressers over the next several weeks. As I slowly went through my closet, I realized I had not worn many of the clothes for over a year. I had purchased new clothes but never spent the time to re-evaluate the older clothes I had, so I kept adding to my closet. So, I started going through my closet. I made a rule that I will donate any clothing item that had not been worn in the past 6 months. Then, the cleaning started. When I finished, I ended up with 8 giant trash bags worth of clothing, which I dropped off at the donation center. After I cleaned out my closet and dresser and limited the items only to the clothes I wore regularly, I felt like a new person. When I opened my closet in the morning to get ready for work, I realized I could find my work clothes a lot faster than before. I have plenty of room in my closet to move things around. I no longer had to search through the massive amounts of hung clothes to find the one dress I wanted. I felt happier because I could find the right clothes, every time. The funny thing was, I looked forward to opening my closet. It was just a closet, why did I experience such a huge shift? I think it's because I had to use my closet every day. Now, finding my clothes was simplified; I had fewer items to search for. The even funnier observation was that I started looking forward to opening my closet because I knew I could find what I wanted, do this easily and quickly. Letting go of 80% of unused clothes in my closet led me to quickly find the 20% of the clothes I loved and wore routinely. 

This made me think. What if I re-organized my life the way I've re-organized my closet? What if I can unapologetically set a rule to spending my time on people and experiences that I loved and enjoyed, and let go of responsibilities/people/service work which I didn't love?