The Hanger Trick

No, I'm not talking about suspending a child from the back of  a door frame, though believe me there are days! I'm talking about a nifty little trick to get rid of CRAP!!

You know me, this is my mission for 2011- decrapification!!
What crap am I specifically referring to? Well, Clothing of course! If you're like me you can easily become over run with the stuff.

In fact, I was just going through my youngest daughter's drawers and realized half of the clothing in there was size twelve months and she now wearing 18 month clothing. No wonder I was stuffing and stuffing to get things to fit! With kids clothes it can be pretty cut and dry; if it doesn't fit pack it away for the next kid or get rid of it.

But what about the big kids? Not the teenagers either. I'm talking the adult crowd. Where kids clothes have nice little tags that tell us if it fits or not, adult clothing comes in all different shapes and sizes, sometimes very abnormal shapes and sizes!! The problem is, we get fat and we get skinny. Some of us do it in matter of weeks... postpartum weeks! Those little tags on our clothes mean nothing half the time. I can fit in this size when I wear this brand, but not this brand. Needles to say, decluttering our clothing can become a little more complicated.

Then there's that game we all play. (You know you do!) "Maybe if I lose five pounds I can squeeze back into this pair of jeans!" or  "I like the way this looks on the hanger! I wish it looked good on me! Maybe if it seasons a little in the closet it will look good someday." We all do it. We all have articles of clothing we haven't touched in forever hanging in our closet or sitting in our drawers.

Recently I came across a great little blog post over at Suddenly Frugal using a hanger trick to weed out wearable and non-wearable clothes. It's a great little idea if you're dedicated to such a thing. The whole process begins like this:

1. Start by hanging all of your clothes on hangers facing one way in your closet.
2. Every time you wear a garment, launder it and get ready to put it away, hang it up with the hanger facing the other way.
3. At the end of six months, do a walk through of your closet and see how many articles of clothing you never touched—meaning the hangers never changed direction.
4. Have everyone in your family try this approach in their closet.

Some of you may say that it seems like a lot of work and maybe it easier for you to just toss. But for some of you, like me, this might be a way to trick the old phyche into giving up on garments that will never be worn by you again.

Regardless of how you do it, it just seems like a great idea. After all, spring is coming and that means spring cleaning! It's wintry cold out and a great time to get a head start on that kind of cleaning!

Happy decrapifying!