Clearing Out My Closet… Are your clothes keeping up with your Life?

I have just completed a major overhaul of my closet – it has been enlivening, revealing, exposing and at times challenging to keep going and not give up half way through. As someone who fairly regularly goes through their closet and culls out what is damaged, too worn or no longer feels like it represents me, I was surprised by how much I had hiding away in drawers and wardrobes that I had passed over in previous culling operations for various what-seemed-to-be valid reasons. This time it was different, I approached every single item right down to socks and tights, tried most of them on and assessed if they still had a place in my life. Did I like them? Did they suit and fit me? Were they in great condition so that I felt great wearing them?

If the answer was yes to all those questions, I then looked at whether they were suitable for the current season, whether they needed a wash, a dry clean, a small alteration.

Those things I chose to discard were also similarly assessed – were they to be donated, sold or offered to women in my life that I knew they would suit and fit? As you may imagine this all took some time and what I discovered was this:

At first, I felt overwhelmed by what I had when I really got to examine it all and not just the clothes that I wore most commonly or had purchased most recently. There were so many things that were a map of where I had been at energetically when I purchased the item. The excess was disturbing. What is excess for everyone is different, since I am most at ease with simplicity, what I regard as excess may be normal for someone else. The hours I had spent accumulating the excess was also disturbing. I got a mental picture of myself being pulled this way and that in various shopping centres around the world over the years. Gosh what a lot of time I had spent ‘shopping’. And here I was now discarding it and that was taking time too! What else could have been done with all that time?

I of course had the impulse just to chuck it all away and be done with it, and not waste any more energy on it but that wasn’t true either – because I wanted to understand my behaviour so I didn’t keep repeating it. I also wanted to avoid my clothes just ending up in landfill because I couldn’t be bothered to dispose of them in the way they could be most ‘useful’.

But first I had to get to grips with going into everything in detail instead of just glossing over certain items because it was too hard and I vaguely felt they be useful one day – so ‘let’s just close the drawer’.

There are many ‘good’ reasons to hold onto things, that made that choice justifiable and I observed all of the below coming up.

1. The amount of money I had spent on something

2. A previous lifestyle that is not actually now but might come around again

3. It was useful

4. It was pretty, beautiful quality fabric etc and ‘too good’ to let go of and/or was irreplaceable

5. It had sentimental value or someone I loved had given it to me

Let’s look at these in the order of the sway they held over me.

Money!

The most common and compelling reason was that I had spent what I consider a fair sum of money on the item of clothing. To actually face the fact that I hadn’t worn it ever, only a few times or even just once and/or not in at least the last couple of years was confronting, as I had to see that in most cases I had wasted money. If I held onto the piece and rationalised that I would use it at some other time, then the fact of wasting money was not so in my face. Accepting that the money had been wasted without self-judgment or castigation made it so much easier to let go of whatever it was. And why not learn the lesson of why you bought it in the first place and you stand a better chance of not doing it again… [More about that here: Clearing Out My Closet What I learned]

There’s no point in having something in your wardrobe that is ‘dead wood’ because you don’t want to deal with the fact that you blew the money. It has to go.

Lifestyle Past but not Present

Another one of my so called ‘good’ reasons for holding onto things was because I once had a lifestyle where I would be travelling to England and sometimes Europe a couple of times a year. England at least is always considerably colder than where I live in sub-tropical Northern New South Wales in Australia. So, I had clothes for England’s colder climate: warm underwear, thicker sweaters, a number of coats and several pairs of thick and coloured tights, all of which I never wear when I am at home. It had been four years since I had been in an English winter and the clothes were still all sitting there neatly packed away in my drawers but they were ‘dead energy’ and taking up space that could be used otherwise. Most of those things I no longer liked, didn’t fit and they just didn’t feel like me anymore and so they had to go.

Not fitting any more is quite a big one for women because our bodies change shape and sometimes quite rapidly. There is absolutely no point in holding onto things over an extended period thinking you will one day be slim or curvy enough to wear it again – unless the piece is something you absolutely love and you are sure it will fit you again. The question to focus on, does this fit me now?

So hence arises the question, ‘Is a piece of clothing keeping up with your lifestyle and your current body?’

If the answer is no – it has to go.

It is Useful

Yes of course not everything in your closet is some amazing statement piece – usually what we find ourselves wearing over and over again are those clothes that suit your lifestyle BUT do you really love these pieces, do they suit and fit you to the point that there is no compromise in what you are wearing, you feel totally at ease and you are expressing you in all your beauty?

You can have your daily items and they can suit and fit you and be in the colours that you feel most at ease in. It can take a little more work/focus to find them and if you don’t have time – you might have a friend who can help you.

When I looked closely at each useful item I was holding onto, I found firstly there was too much of it (how many white shirts do you need?) and that there could be some kind of compromise involved. Some of the things I didn’t really like that much because they didn’t fit quite right, there was a detail of the style/shape that wasn’t it but ‘it’s okay for work’ or ‘I’m only going to the shops’. Or I need a shirt or whatever and I can’t find one I really love so this will do. Or the fabric meant I could only wear it once before it needed to be washed or dry cleaned – that’s just not practical.

Or maybe I did love it but I’d worn it to death and now it needed replacing because it had lost its zing and was decidedly the worse for wear.

It was ‘Irreplaceable’

Well yes it might be – particularly since nowadays, in Australia at least, the quality of clothes is declining both in workmanship and in fabrics.

The question is: are you wearing it? Or how often have you worn it in the last couple of years. If the answer is not at all or hardly ever – then be ruthless and let it go. Recognise that is probably is not ‘you’ any more – we don’t wear things for a reason [more about that in my second blog].

Consider on-selling it if it is a label/brand/style that is desirable or offering it to someone you know who it might suit and they will actually wear it.

It has sentimental value

We definitely have things that mean a lot to us, ‘I got married in this dress.’ ‘My husband gave me this lingerie set when we were first in love.’ I was wearing this when I discovered I was pregnant with my first child’. ‘My grandmother knitted this for me.’ ‘I landed my first big contract in this suit.’

Yes, obviously we keep things because they have sentimental value but it’s worth examining how many of these things you need to keep. Is your wardrobe (or home) stuffed with these sentimental pieces? Are you holding onto them because you fear offending someone or losing a bit of your identity if you let it go? Or you know it was given in so much love that you feel churlish letting it go – but you received the love at the time didn’t you? Be honest if you really don’t want this item taking up your space any more – let it go. Who will you be without it, and how does that feel?

So what’s the value in going through this process of clearing your closet?

Clothes that just sit around not being worn, deteriorate and are symbolic of a stagnant energy that is then in your home. They also add mass and clutter your wardrobe which obscures what you actually have.

What I have discovered is it’s best to be decisive and once you have an inkling you won’t be wearing something, better bite the bullet and let it go – that way someone else gets the benefit of it. And if it is still a current piece then you can often sell it. The longer it sits around the less desirable and therefore saleable, it becomes – unless of course it is a high-end collectable piece like a Chanel or something. And the same rule goes for recent purchase mistakes too, if you’ve made a mistake, move it out and on… Don’t leave it in the back of your closet thinking one day you will wear it, when deeper down you know you won’t – dealing with it sooner rather than later means you are more likely to be able to on-sell it.

In going through the process of culling you will find out things about yourself – your taste, what you really like to wear, your shopping and spending habits for example – that perhaps you didn’t consciously know already, or were turning a blind eye to. This is very informative and allows you to proceed differently if you choose to.

Clearing your closet, you are actually creating SPACE both externally and internally and in that space things are able to be seen and realised, which is enlivening and expansive. Plus you can end up with a very streamlined, ordered wardrobe and that is a joy to behold (if you love order, like I do). It also enables you to see what you really need to pull everything together for your lifestyle, making what you do have more wearable and helping you with your buying choices to avoid impulse purchases and buying the same things over again, as you now know very clearly what you have.

Although I felt knew what I had in the closet, before going through the cull I actually did not in the precise way I now know exactly what I have, why it is there and when to wear it. Having this precision and intimacy with my clothes has made it a whole lot simpler to choose outfits for the day or an occasion.

AND that makes getting dressed every morning so much easier – try it.