Click to enlarge

Click to enlarge

I started my Drawer-A-Day pruning in the logical place – my dresser drawers and night stand.
Here are the stats:

  • 5 days
  • 8 drawers (2 of which I skipped – after  emptying these drawers I chose to remove nothing.)

I used the process described on Ash Wednesday – Empty the drawer and divide the contents into 4 piles:

  • Keep
  • Give Away
  • Throw Away
  • Wait

RESULTS/LEARNINGS:

  1. Easiest things to give away:
    • Stockings in good condition. (Thanks to the enlightened female fashion trend that favors bare legs in the summer I seldom wear stockings anymore. I saved a few for when I’m invited to a wedding or the White House.)
    • Fingernail and toenail clippers, tweezers. Yes these are helpful gadgets to have but do I really need 6 toenail clippers? I saved two – one for me and one for potential visitors.
    • A battery powered tweezer that never worked that efficiently. After all, I did keep two human powered tweezers.
    • Mini travel alarm. I love miniaturized things for travel but when I tried to replace the battery to see if it worked, I found that it didn’t run on a battery. Where it got its power is a mystery. It certainly couldn’t run on solar power while stashed in my drawer.
  2. Hardest to give away:
    • T-shirts with political or spiritual sayings. These are more like wearable bumper stickers, but is it really worth saving a campaign shirt from a 2012 or 2008 election – even for a novelty party?
    • I did save one T-shirt showing the Last Supper with all women apostles. The best day to wear this is Holy Thursday and it was hard to justify a once a year wearing, but maybe I’ll just have to wear it more often.
  3. Throwaways
    • Stockings that had seen better days and peds that I would never wear even though they’re in good condition.
  4. Things I kept:
    • The two skipped drawers contained 16 winter tops and sweaters that I wear regularly.
  5. Distinguishing Give-Aways from Throw-Aways
    • Jim said that probably some of my give-aways should really be throw-aways. This applied to my “good condition” stockings and several slightly used lipsticks. As usual, he’s probably right.
  6. Click to show whole dresser

    Click to show whole dresser

    No Outward Difference.

    • My dresser and night stand don’t look any different from the outside but I have a pleasant feeling when I look inside and see space that is no longer crammed.
    • Even though I cleared out a fair amount of stuff, I was surprised that I couldn’t actually consolidate items enough to gain an empty drawer. There are still too many items in the “I don’t use or wear this much, but I might want it someday” category. I still have room to grow – or maybe I mean diminish.

Since we’re talking about clothes, perhaps this would be a good time to acquaint you with Project 333. This is the invention of Courtney Carver who challenges us to wear only 33 items of clothing for 3 months (one season). You don’t have to count your wedding ring, underwear, sleep wear, in-home lounge wear, and workout clothing. I haven’t officially tried it yet but am intrigued to see what I’d be left with after my 16 winter tops.

A question to ponder: What would be your hardest or easiest dresser items to part with?