Are Your Winter Clothes Put Away?

I am a messy person. My closet doesn't look anything like the one above. I was messy before kids, and kids have only made it worse. In my struggle to overcome the mess I've discovered a wonderful articles at Like Mother, Like Daughter that actually make me feel HOPEFUL and not judged or depressed (just scroll down towards the bottom and check out the sidebar...she lists them nicely there).  I keep a list of her Reasonably Clean Home series right here.

One of these articles is titled "Laundry Problems Start With Clothes". The basic gist of it was that most of us have more clothes in our closets than we need (or at least than we need in any particular season)...and that this hampers (pun intended) our attempts to get the laundry under control.

Now, I wanted to address a particularly Texan issue regarding the storage of winter clothes.

On Leilas Laundry Worksheet she asked:

"Why are shorts cluttering the world up if it’s winter?"

MY ANSWER:   Well, because I live in Texas, that's why. It actually may have a low of 20 degrees one day and a high of 85 degrees the next in the dead middle of winter here.

Here in Waco you can't really put away summer clothes, except the swimsuits and maybe tank tops (and not even the swinsuits if you plan to swim at Baylor's Pool this winter). So my solution in winter is to put at least half of the summer clothes away (because at very least they won't be wearing it as much as in summer). This usually entails boxing up all the t-shirts with very summery designs (surfboards and palm trees and such), tank tops, and all but 2-3 pairs of shorts.

I still have the problem of needing much more shelf space in winter than in summer (since you can't put away all the summer stuff and the winter stuff is so much bulkier), but at least it's slightly more manageable with some of the summer stuff put away.

Now I'd like to ask you some questions:

1. Have you put your winter clothes away yet?
2. Have any great suggestions on transitioning closets from summer to winter, clothing storage tips, etc?  (If you know of any good way to deal with the extra clothes in winter, I'd be especially grateful to hear it!) 

Picture by Rubbermaid.