Everyone has at least one area in their house that’s set aside for Unpacked Boxes. Right? OK, so that’s probably not true. But it’s been true in my house for years. We can attribute 10 percent of that to the fact that we’ve moved many, many times — sometimes in awfully quick succession. Ninety percent of it, though, is because some of us are pack rats.

Anyway, this week in Nichole and Jeni’s Carnival of Clutter, we’re tackling the Worst Closet in the House. And in our house? That’s Pete’s closet. It isn’t a huge closet, so there wasn’t all that much room for Stuff. But boy howdy, did we take every bit of available space with Unpacked Boxes and Other Ridiculous Things. I can’t show you what it looked like before, because Rockford emptied it out before I was able to take a picture of it. But I can show you some of the stuff that came out of it:

That, friends, is a lot for one small closet to hold. And that isn’t even all of it! I would’ve needed a wider frame to capture all of it. But we cleared it all out, and now Pete’s closet is actually holding his clothes! Cleaning out his closet also made room for me to try a toy-rotation system, which I’ve been wanting to do for quite awhile. I separated his toys into groups — dinosaurs, cars, different types of blocks, etc. — and put about half of them in boxes in the top of the closet. In a month or so, I’ll swap out something that’s been out and available and put something from storage back in the rotation — something along the lines of: dinos out, robots in. It’s been great for helping to keep his room clean, and I think not being faced with So Many Toys has also made it easier for him to play by himself in his room. Both of which are nice for me.

Also nice? Opening the closet door and seeing this:

As for the Worst Closet at Jeni’s house, she cast a Scourgify spell on it. Now she has the perfect place to store any boy wizards that might happen her way.

(Oh look! I’m giving away two Atlanta CityPASSes! You should enter!)