Some mother prefer to start getting control of the house in their own bedroom because it is the most personal place to them. As they seek strength to order their lives, it seems natural to begin the uncluttered and beautifying process in the bedroom.
The piles of paper around the edges of the bed and on the bedside tables are ushered out. The books on the chest of drawers are given away or re shelved elsewhere. Perhaps some of the awkward furniture that has been wedged in to hold more stuff is removed. Once they start to see order, they begin to look for beauty. The bedspread and curtains are the first to be changed. On and on it goes—ugly creeps out and lovely eases in until the mother builds that spot where she always knows she can find strength and dignity to carry her through the hard times of renovating the rest of the house. We will consider several strategic areas in the bedroom, starting with closets.
When the closet needs to be tackled, and many items i siding in there need to leave the shadow of your protection. The bedroom is frequently the place many miscellaneous items have been squirreled. Sentimental pleasures are here for safekeeping and comfort. In the closet are many old, outgrown, but “good” clothes that have not been worn in more than a month of Sundays. All of these items need to go into one of four places—a bOX with “Give Away” written on it, a box with “Store Elsewhere” written on it, back into the closet, or, if you cannot decide about some pieces of clothing or if they belong to someone else, into a box labeled “Thinking About” with a date in the near future marked on it.
If your clothes are in the box, your mind will begin to adjust to their going away, and your spirit will begin to exult in the glorious freedom of actually having room in your closet.
When the due-date comes, you will in all likelihood happily take the box to whatever charity is closest to your house. (Remember, the easier you make it, the more likely it is that you will do it.) If you absolutely must
retrieve something out of the box before it goes, you may do so. My guess is that you won’t even look inside.
If the box is full of someone else’s things, tell that person where the clothes are and the date they are leaving so he or she can adjust. Some wives just move their husbands’ unused clothes to the basement or another closet without telling them. If they don’t ever ask for them, the clothes move out to find a useful purpose in some other place. It is only fair to the clothes to help them find significance by being used. An unworn jacket is an unhappy jacket.