The Case of the Missing Boot

I think most everyone can relate to wanting to declutter.  We all lead such busy lives, that unless you are one of those diligent persons who stays on top of things, clutter can quickly take over.  For the past couple of years, I have put decluttering on my list of resolutions for the upcoming year.  We’ve made some dents here and there, but never a full-throttled effort.  And things like this happen.



This was the entrance to our closet.  I loathe having to go in there in hopes of finding “THE” shoes that I want to wear on any given day.  Hence why I think I resorted to keeping my top 5 pairs outside of the closet so that I didn’t have to tackle the abyss.  Now, we’ve tackled the abyss before – because two winters ago, one of my favorite black boots went MIA.  We pulled every shoe out but had zero luck in finding the missing boot.  Now I’m sure the boot didn’t just get up and walk away and hoped that some day we would find it.

Fast forward to this past weekend.  Both Curt and I had yesterday off – so Sunday night, I “challenged” Curt to tackle the abyss.  I had had enough and wanted some closet space back.  After I dropped Miss B off at the school bus, Curt dug in.  Pulling out all of the shoes and carefully matching them up.  And my job was to sort through my pile and determine which pairs were going to get sent off to Goodwill.  After every shoe had been taken out, of course we were left the lonely black boot.

Since we were on a roll, we anteed up the challenge to include some clothes.  I went through most of my drawers and Curt went through his big pile of ties (which also consumed a nice chunk of our closet floor real estate).  Don’t ask me why the tie pile was on the floor.  My guess is that he just had so many that they wouldn’t stay up on hangars and it was easier to just pick through the pile.

Anyways – the whole “challenge” took us a good 3 hours or so and we ended up with 10 big black garbage bags to be taken to the dump.  And guess what?  Curt found my missing black boot.  It had been kidnapped by the ties.

We still have some work to do, especially in other areas of the house.  But boy does it feel good to have accomplished so much yesterday.  I feel like we have a new bedroom and closet.  Now we just have to keep up the momentum and chip away.  So back to how I started this post, decluttering is yet again on my annual list of resolutions.  Have a great day!