Over the past year, I've been removing clothing that I don't wear often or love. Most of these items get sent to ThredUp, an online consignment shop. They send you a free bag with pre-paid postage that you fill up with your higher quality clothing. Your mailman takes the bag away, and a few weeks later you get store credit based on which items ThredUp can resell. They pay you upfront, so you don't have to wait for the items to sell. With the store credit earned I've been able to turn two or three things I don't wear into one thing I do. If you sign up for ThredUp through this link, you get $10 store credit to start. I've found countless items for under $10, and they often do free shipping specials.
This time, though, I knew I needed to seriously purge my closet.
I tackled this project with fervor one evening after work.
My first step was to take all of my clothes out of my closet and dresser and put them on the floor in my living room.
As I had suspected I have a tee-shirt problem.
Once everything was out, I went through it piece by piece. I had already started to notice which clothes I wore the most and had the most versatility. This made this process a little faster and easier.
One of the things that has inspired me throughout this process was, ironically, a book I hated.
The 100 Thing Challenge
is one man's journey to owning only 100 things. I love the idea of this, and I appreciate some of his thinking throughout the project.
He decided that if it he rarely used an item, he would get rid of it and just borrow it when needed. He also stopped hanging onto things he "might use someday, maybe." I have a lot of clothes that fall into this "someday" category. If I haven't needed or wanted to wear it yet, I probably won't in the future.
So there were some good things that I took away from this book. When he decided to give up hobbies because he would never be amazing at them and when he insists that he met the devil in the form of a beautiful women while hiking, he started to lose me.
Anyway...
Any clothes that didn't make the cut went into storage. Knowing my clothes wouldn't be far if I changed my mind made me a bit more ruthless with my decisions. If I hadn't worn it recently and didn't think I would need it over the winter, it went into the bin.
About 2/3 of my clothing ended up in storage at the end of this process.
This is what I ended up keeping in my closet and dresser.
Now I'm testing my new system. Do I have enough clothes to get me through the week? Do I like these clothes? Will I need to get something out of storage before the seasons change again? I guess we'll see.
Have you tried downsizing your wardrobe? How did it go?
The 100 Thing Challenge
is one man's journey to owning only 100 things. I love the idea of this, and I appreciate some of his thinking throughout the project.He decided that if it he rarely used an item, he would get rid of it and just borrow it when needed. He also stopped hanging onto things he "might use someday, maybe." I have a lot of clothes that fall into this "someday" category. If I haven't needed or wanted to wear it yet, I probably won't in the future.
So there were some good things that I took away from this book. When he decided to give up hobbies because he would never be amazing at them and when he insists that he met the devil in the form of a beautiful women while hiking, he started to lose me.
Anyway...
Any clothes that didn't make the cut went into storage. Knowing my clothes wouldn't be far if I changed my mind made me a bit more ruthless with my decisions. If I hadn't worn it recently and didn't think I would need it over the winter, it went into the bin.
About 2/3 of my clothing ended up in storage at the end of this process.
This is what I ended up keeping in my closet and dresser.
Now I'm testing my new system. Do I have enough clothes to get me through the week? Do I like these clothes? Will I need to get something out of storage before the seasons change again? I guess we'll see.
Have you tried downsizing your wardrobe? How did it go?
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