Over the last year or so, my life has imploded — or exploded, depending on how you look at it. I finished grad school, finished my internships, took and passed my boards, earned my state license and then FINALLY started my first real job.

Then there was the purchase of my first real car and the start of a very long debt repayment system (yay for student loans and crap). In the midst of all of this…Our house has blown up completely. Any sense or organization?? ALL GONE. Clutter??? Everywhere. Losing stuff? You betcha. DAILY.

Being out all day at work makes it easy to ignore this. But after stressful days at work, the last thing I wanted to do was feel stressful once I got home. That’s all that was happening. Dan and I would be getting ridiculously, irrationally pissed off at each other because neither of us had tackled a thing once we got home from work.

After spending time at the 20SB Summit last weekend…and seeing (and listening!) to the amazing Jenny Blake (PS: You must look her up. She is a life coach and an amazing one with fantastic tips on running your life!)– I have been inspired this week to think about my goals in life.

I have many. For my health, for work, and for my marriage. I talked to Ben on the way to the 20sb session that very morning we saw Jenny, about how the biggest issue in my marriage…is chores. WHY? Because we hadn’t ever faced it and tried to come up with a way to make it important to tackle.

Dan had taken a lot of the responsibility of keeping house while I was in school and busy as heck. Now, he wants me to help and I’m saying…er… “WHY? You had it all together!! You don’t need my help!” But I have gotten so frustrated at his form of organization and the loss of my things. So dang it — time to step up, stop complain and arguing and face this head on.

I’ll admit it. I have too many clothes. I have a large dresser, a decent sized closet, and a separate drawer system for my intimates and socks. And a few laundry baskets of clean clothes that didn’t fit anywhere. I have no extra hangers.

It really boils down to the fact that I love buying clothes too much. I don’t buy expensive clothing (I love bargains — TJ Maxx, Old Navy/GAP, Ann Taylor Loft, The Limited — all have fabulous clearance racks — you just have to sort carefully), but I buy a lot of cheaper stuff. Especially camis and plain T’s. They are everywhere.

I feel a lot lighter. I really do. I really liked my method, too. I started placing things in piles, of TO GO, NOT SURE. And then I was placing things in the drawers they belonged in. Once the drawers were semi full with things I knew I wanted to keep (because I do have things in the wash right now), I had to make some decisions.

I sorted through my clothes and if there were things I still wanted, I had to go through the drawer and make a switch. It was quite the process. Now my workout clothes (pants and shirts) are all in ONE drawer. My camis/tanks? ONE drawer. My PJ’s. ONE DRAWER.

The room my closet and stuff is in? Still not perfect. Originally, it had been our bedroom (it is an entire upstairs room). But we had moved our bed to one of the smaller bedrooms so I can turn the upstairs into my lair, with my office and a guest room.

The room is pretty large, obviously! The other small room downstairs that is now my office will become a dining room. There is a lot of work left to do to make any of this possible, but just emptying my clothing piles out FEELS AMAZING.

I can’t wait until the next step. This week? Pack up my office for the soon move to the upstairs!