How is your fall going? Much as I hate to think about it, we’ll be getting out the winter coats and boots soon. I’m hoping for a few more weeks of warm fall weather, but this felt like a good week to sort through and declutter coats, boots, and other outerwear in the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge.

October is an excellent time of year to do this because local charities will be having their winter coat drives soon. This means any outerwear we no longer need can go to someone who really needs it. If you’re looking for a coat drive to donate to, check out The Salvation Army in Canada, or One Warm Coat in the United States.

Are you ready for week 40? Let’s get decluttering!

This post was originally published in October 2021 and republished in November 2024.

What is the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge?

In this year-long journey, we’re tackling one task at a time with the goal of cleaning up and organizing our homes. If you’ve just joined us, no worries. You can jump right in with this week’s challenge. Just check out the first two posts in the series to download your free checklists.

• 52-Week Decluttering Challenge
• Week 1 – Easy Decluttering Checklist

You can get easy access to all previous weekly posts on the main Decluttering page.

Week 40 – Declutter coats, boots and other outerwear

Living in a northern country like Canada means owning big, bulky outerwear items like winter coats, boots, and snow pants. This presents the challenge of where to store these items during the summer months.

For a family of four, winter gear takes up too much space to leave in the front hall closet when warmer weather arrives. In our house, we store out-of-season outerwear out of the way in the basement—in a closet, and on hooks on the wall beside our laundry area.

This week’s decluttering and organizing tips

It had been quite a while since I really took the time to sort through our collection of outerwear. They definitely needed some organizing. Here are couple of organizing tips and learnings from week 40.

• Store like things together. We had snow pants and splash pants in the closet and hanging on hooks beside the laundry area. I moved them all to the hooks, so I only have to look in one place when I need them.
• Save space and keep your footwear neat and organized by storing them on a shoe/boot rack or shelving unit.

Here’s a before and after shot of the area where we store our out-of-season items. These couple of simple changes made the area look so much tidier.

What I got rid of

In total, I got rid of 52 items this week.

• 6 coats
• 2 pairs of snow pants
• 3 books – I know they’re not outerwear, but I found them on the floor of the basement closet
• 6 miscellaneous items – also rescued from the bottom of the closet
• 35 hangers that were taking up space in the closet

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2024 Update

It has been three years so I’m rebooting the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge to see how much I can get rid of in 2024.

A message in our church bulletin last weekend about a winter clothing drive got me motivated to go through our outerwear. Now that our girls are grown and aren’t outgrowing their clothes every winter, I didn’t find a lot. I did, however, set aside 6 items to donate to the drive.

So that’s week 40 done. I’m really happy to have cleared up the pile of boots that were thrown on the floor!  

If you have friends or family members who could benefit from a little less clutter in their lives, please share this post and spread the word!

Do you have any tips for keeping your coats and boots organized? Tell us below.