Cleaning, organizing, etc... at my mom's house

I know this isn't a craft post, but... last fall, I helped my mom get some big clutter out of her bedroom closet, her office, and a little in the living room, and I wanted to share because of how awesome it was she was willing to go through this process and get rid of so much stuff!! 

Here goes!!

I totally forgot to take before pictures of her office (sorry!!) since we just got right into cleaning, but here's the afters of about 7 hours of work, over 2 days...

Office after

Office after

Office after

Office bookshelves after

 I'm hoping she will be able to go through the rest of the books and trinkets on these shelves, and if she can, I'm pretty sure we can move the books to a shelf in her bedroom, and be able to move ALL 3 SHELVES out of here so she can have wall space to display her art stuffs she's trying to paint, and have less cluttered feeling overall to WANT to paint more!! :)

Now, her living room is a project for another day, but at the very least, we did get an oooold shelf (seriously, she's had it since college y'all!!) and got her more space next to her recliner/the sofa:

Emptied out shelf from living room ready for donation!

I mean, just LOOK at that thing!!! Doesn't it look old and rickety!! Yikes!!

And here's the space she now has with the shelf gone!

Shelf #2 gone! The space!!!

Next was her bedroom closet:

Closet shelf - before

Closet floor - before

Closet shelf - before

Closet shelf - before

Needless to say, the next handful of pictures are of the clothes racks before...

And now for some after shots! She still has a bunch of clothes, but she is doing a fantastic job at getting in to a better diet and losing weight so she can fit into some of these clothes items she's been saving for just that! She's definitely doing a better job than me at the dieting, that's for sure! ;)

Closet shelf - after

Closet floor - after

It's a little hard to tell in some of these photos, but she did get rid of a lot of clothes! The biggest reason it's hard to tell is she has a number of these hangers (the black ones) that have a hook on both ends, with holes in the bar in between. These allow you to hang multiple items of clothing on the same hanger, but then have them hanging vertically instead of taking up horizontal space on the shelves! They're awesome if you have a small closet, however....well, you get it. :)

This picture is here to show you how she's got her necklaces arranged, however, although they are in fact organized on this holder, there are so many, it makes it look cluttered. Something to watch out for when you have an organizer like this. (Did anyone guess that it's actually a shoe rack? ;) )

And now the part I'm sure you're all excited for: the trash and donation piles!!!

Donations first!

Piled in my dad's office (yes, there's a ton of movies.. the man was a collector....lol)

Donation pile from combination closet, bookshelf in living room and mom's office

And the 2nd pile in the living room:

More donation piles!!

 Aaaaand the trash pile!! Yay!!!

Trash pile!!!

 The next, and final part of the 2 day, 12 hour cleaning spree was to load up the donations in my and my mom's cars: 

Mom's car is stuffed!!  

Mom's full trunk of donations....

Back of my car is stuffed too!!

Whelp, there you have it!

2 days, and 12 hours later, there's muuuuch more space for my mom in her closet, and particularly in her office, but there's still much to be done.

Organizing and cleaning can be a difficult process, but it's best if you have someone to help push you along, keep you motivated, and if anything, help with the heavy lifting!

I know you can do it! :)

Until then...craft ya laters!!