Hey y’all! August is inching along, and in my part of the country school is back in full swing. When I think of back to school I think of excitement, dread, and new clothes. I loved going back to school shopping with my mom, and I loved getting to school and wearing all my new clothes. Even though I’m not a student or teacher any more, the start of the school year always makes me want to shop!
Between the start of the new school year and the seasons about to change, I figured August would be a good time for a closet clean out. The goal here is not to dwindle your closet down to bare bones. It’s to help your closet work for you, not against you. If it’s properly maintained, a functional closet can make the “what do I wear today” process easier. We’ll start by getting rid of the items that do not work for you and end up refining your closet using the Rule of 1.5.
When you clean out your closet, or anything else, there are four final destinations:
Trash: If you were homeless and would say no thanks to an item, trash is where it belongs.
Donate: It’s nice and easy to gather a big box of items to donate, roll up to your favorite thrift store and unload it. If there are particularly sentimental items, it’s ok to spend a LITTLE extra time finding a person you know who will get good use out of these treasured items. Emotions are not the enemy in the tidying/editing process.
Storage: for things that you know you’ll never use again, but are too sentimental to get rid of. My question is, “Can you print a picture and treasure the memory without taking up space in your closet?” Keeping things for sentimental reasons isn’t the enemy of a tidy home. If you’re keeping something for sentimental reasons, honor the special memory by storing it correctly. If you’re going to keep it crumpled in the bottom corner of your closet then just put it out of its misery and get rid of it.
Keep: for things you wear as regularly as the item is intended. Not everything is meant to be worn every three months, or even every season. Now, this is morbid, but I have a “funeral dress” that I wear to funerals. Just funerals. I don’t wear it any more than that, but I keep it because it serves its purpose. It’s worth the space in my closet to keep my funeral dress so I don’t have to grieve AND think about what to wear.
Sometimes once we’ve gone through the elimination process we still have an excess of clothes in the closet. How do you know it’s an excess? Your closet feels like a clearance rack on Black Friday: full edge to edge of complete chaos. This is where the hardest part comes in: The Rule of 1.5. You’re going to have to put your decisive hat on and keep only your favorite and most functional items. For items that are meant to be everyday items (not church clothes, fancy clothes, or funeral dresses), if you don’t wear it monthly consider getting rid of it.
One final note about the closet clean out process: as I said before, emotions are not the enemy. One of the questions on my flow chart is “Do you hate it?” It is ok to hate some clothes. Maybe an item holds a really bad memory associated with it, but its functional so you keep it. It’s ok to save up money to replace it, even if its perfectly functional. Clothes serve our needs, not the other way around. As you work through this process, free yourself from the expectation to purge every “unnecessary” cardigan and keep only “practical” items. Whether you like it or not, the fact is that your clothes reflect you. So curate yourself a closet that is a living museum of items that scream YOU!
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It's a real fun one, download this pdf Flow Chart HERE
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