A Wardrobe Diet: How to Make Your Favorite Jeans Fit into Your Closet!

                      The August heat was so dense in my upstairs bedroom last night that it made me uncomfortable to even look at the cotton sweaters that I was pulling from the depths of my walk-in closet.  Despite the temperature, I was able to reduce the amount of clothes and in my closet, dresser, and shelves by 23.4%.  I went from an ostentatious 254.5 articles of clothing (and shoes) to a slightly trimmer 195 pieces in a little more than an hour’s worth of spontaneous energy.

            I got the idea to sort through my clothes on my way home from Ogunquit, Maine yesterday.  I had just bought myself a pair of brown, leather, 60% off boots at the Bass Outlet.  If I could have designed a pair of boots to be made for me, they would look just like these babies.  The problem was, I felt guilty about even having them.  Although they were perfect, I knew it was ridiculous to spend half a week’s worth of pay on a pair of boots when I already have so many clothes and shoes at home.  Plus, my goal had been to bring less stuff back to college this year, so why was I buying more? That’s when I got the idea to do a total closet cleansing ritual.  Even without boot guilt, I usually drop off a shopping bag’s worth of clothes at Goodwill every 3 months or so, but this was going to be a wardrobe liposuction to tell my great-grandkids about. 

            I started a chart on the back of a used piece of computer paper to keep track of how much I was ditching.  At first, my categories were broad, like “shirts” and “shoes,” but I realized that I needed to narrow my listings because I was losing count.  I had to separate my “shirts” category into “tee shirts,” ”sports shirts,” ”tank tops,” and “dress shirts,” which doesn’t even include my separate “sweatshirts” and “sweaters” groups.  I also decided to keep track of how much I was donating and throwing away so that I would know exactly how much progress I had made.  Here are the numbers:

 

	Shirts	Skirts	Dresses	Jeans	Pants	Shorts	Sport shirts
Original	23	7	15	4	3	3	25
Toss	4	0	0	0	1	0	2
Donate	2	2	2	0	1	0	2
Keep	17	5	13	4	1	3	21

 

	Sport shorts/pants	Pairs of socks	Bras	Underwear	Bathing suits	Tank tops	Sweatshirts
Original	11	36.5	13	22	6	18	13
Toss	0	9.5	1	4	1.5	0	0
Donate	1	4	4	0	1.5	3	3
Keep	10	23	8	18	4	15	11

 

 

	Sweaters	Dress shirts	Sneakers	Flip flops	Boots	Shoes	PJ pants/ shorts	Belts
Original	10	8	7	6	4	8	4	8
Toss	0	3	0	2	0	0	0	0
Donate	3	0	0	1	0	1	0	3
Keep	7	5	7	3	4	5	4	5

 

 

            I found these numbers shocking.  For a girl who considers herself a minimalist, 13 dresses seem a bit extreme.  And even though I only ever wear the same 2 belts over and over again, I still could only part with 3 of my 8.  What I found most surprising was that even after getting rid of 19 shirts I could still wear a different top from my closet for 54 days straight (not including dresses)!  That’s almost 2 month’s worth of shirts. 

            I’ve definitely still got some work to do to slim down my closet, but I did make a lot of progress last night.  I was able to get rid of 57.5 shoes and clothes combined, 31.5 of which was donated to Goodwill.  I also discovered 2 systems that I plan to enforce in my closet.  The first is to make trade offs.  When I come home from the Gap with 3 new shirts, I need to get rid of 3 old shirts.  The second idea addresses the clothes that I always keep but never seem to wear.  I had a blue sweater with sleeves that may have been inspired by the elves in Lord of the Rings in my closet for years.  I never wore it, but I always thought that an occasion might come up when I would want it.  There’s other stuff that I don’t wear, but keep.  Shirts with memories.  Pants that are nice, but I never seem to notice in my drawer.  Instead of keeping them all eternally, I put aside 10 questionable pieces at the beginning of the summer.  They stayed in the back of my closet and I didn’t look at them for 4 months.  Last night, I took them all out and realized that I didn’t miss a single one.  For some reason it was much easier to let go when I knew that I had already lived without them and, for the most part, forgotten about them completely.  I recommend these two systems to anybody who, like me, has a morbidly obese wardrobe.  It sounds silly, but I felt lighter this morning when I got out of bed.  It was like I had been carrying those 57.5 clothes and shoes on my back until today, when I noticed the load was gone.

            Even if you don’t have 13 dresses like me, I recommend taking a guillotine to your wardrobe.  Get out a pencil and paper and blare the radio.  It only took a few extra minutes for me to write down my progress, and it made me more motivated to let stuff go.  Knowing that I had 36.5 pairs of socks exactly shamed me into getting rid of some questionable ones.  Another piece of advice I have is to not skim anything in the sorting process.  Even stuff you wear regularly.  Does it have a tear?  Armpit stains?  Bleach stains?  Ditch.  Chances are you put it on out of habit, but if you saw it at a store in its current condition you wouldn’t consider wearing it.  Not only are you getting rid of stuff you don’t need, you are also refining your style.  By trashing the crap you are making sure you will only go out dressed in your best!