Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Daily Declutter Challenge #20 - Too Many Jackets!

My mother has an amazing life story. She grew up as a farm kid in the 1950's in rural Alberta with seven other brothers and sisters.  They had very little money and she can still recall the sting of poverty. She vividly remembers the feeling of feeling "damp and cold".  As a result, I'm sure she has made it her life's mission to ensure her grandchildren never feel the same way.

She is our champion thrift store shopper and has pretty much clothed my entire family with her amazing finds. I am truly blessed to have a mom who helps us out in such a way.

But she has one weakness! Any time she finds a pretty, warm, coat in great condition at a second hand store she buys it for one of my kids. And my weakness is that I keep them all!

There is another closet FULL of coats too!
So today's Declutter Challenge was to thin our bulging coat collection.I went through our downstairs closet, the winter clothes bin, and our coat hooks and got rid of the duplicates and not needed items. My four year old had 4 winter coats the exact same size! I was able to bag up for our garage sale the ones we didn't need and keep the favourites. I found I was really torn when it came down to 2 raincoats for Ellie. They were both adorably cute, the same size, and same thickness. I was tempted to keep them both, thinking, "Well, what if one gets really dirty, or we lose it, or it gets ruined...". Then I recalled the mornings of indecision and game playing on Ellie's part, "No I want the polka dot jacket! No I want the other one!" and that was enough to seal the deal. She's got one. It's adorable. Mad dashes out the door will be simpler.

I know it's not that dramatic looking, but now there aren't coats layered on top of coats.  And this is also AFTER my girls came home from school, so they added more coats to the mix as well!

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