Cleaning Out Your Closets

Some late spring cleaning and de-cluttering at home got me thinking about this early post. If you’re like me, you have a lot of stuff sitting around that you don’t use or wear anymore. Now’s a great time to gather that stuff together and get it out of your house – either by donating or selling it. Just be sure not to replace it with more stuff you won’t be using.

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This past Friday was the 6 month anniversary of my retirement date. The time sure went fast! I’m sure not having to be on Zoom calls all day during the week helped with that.

After 6 months of metaphorically cleaning my closets by detoxing from all those years in Corporate America, I finally waded into my closets to thin out my stash of work clothes, jackets, hats, and assorted other stuff I no longer need. A big reason it took this long for me to take the plunge is that I wanted to wait for the local Goodwill store to open again so the stuff wasn’t just sitting in my basement waiting. So today was the day.

I started with my work shirts. One would think it would be easy to just grab a bunch and pack them up for donation. Not so much. As I went through my inventory, there were several that were easy picks, but as the herd thinned, choosing what to donate and what to keep got tougher. Removing the “I really like that one” and replacing it with “I haven’t worn it in 6 months and probably won’t wear it again” helped me to whittle down my collection to a reasonable number and to only what I will actually wear.

Same process for the work pants and jeans. Though that was a little easier since there were several pairs for a waist size I likely won’t see again. Still, some tough choices getting down to a couple of tan and a couple blue/black to cover the color palate of the rest of my wardrobe. At least being a guy makes that part easy!

On to the collection of caps I somehow acquired over the years. Some tough choices here too but applying the “wear it vs. like it” criteria helped me reduce my collection by half. Funny how attached we can become to things like hats or shirts. Same for jackets, sweatshirts, etc. I did manage to get a few of each into the donation pile, though my wife took ownership of one of those sweatshirts.

So after a couple of hours of turmoil in my closets I have 3 bags of clothes to donate and a good chunk of extra closet space – which I quickly spread my stuff into to keep my wife from hijacking. It felt good to get that stuff just sitting in my closet out of the way and hopefully to someone who can use it. Somehow the physical cleaning of my closets was also a mental cleansing of sorts. Letting go of a bit of the past and making room for the future – though I have no intention of re-stocking my closets. I’m going to enjoy that extra physical and mental space.

It can be daunting to take on the task of cleaning your closets, both metaphorically and physically, but I highly recommend both. You will feel better about yourself and your life, you’ll help others with your donations, and you’ll have extra closet space.  

To better align with Wix’ email notification schedule, I am changing my publishing schedule to every 2 weeks. Look for next post the week of 06-23-2025, with an email notification.

www.RetiredandInspiredat55.com  06-09-2025