Essential help to clear out your closet
When you open your wardrobe door each morning, how do you feel? Excited to wear clothes you love? Or, overwhelmed that you have to scrabble around for 5 minutes trying to find something that you want to wear?
If you feel exhausted and depressed every time you open your wardrobe door – you are not alone.
Our wardrobes need managing
We are not taught how to manage our wardrobes, only encouraged to buy more clothes. So we keep stuffing them into our wardrobes, hoping that somehow, magically, they will sort themselves out and group themselves into beautifully stylish outfits that suit you perfectly.
I think you’ve probably realised that this just doesn’t happen.
Most likely when you open your wardrobe door in the morning, you shut it as soon as you can. You pull out whatever you can see that will be ok. These items of clothing are quite often the ones which you have worn most recently.
Then you shut the door behind you. You think “I must sort that closet out”.
But you never do.
It seems like too daunting a task. Plus, out of sight, out of mind. Once the door is safely shut you can forget all about it.
Except that it doesn’t go away. Each day, you go through the same routine:
Open closet; grab clothes; shut closet.
You have a vague feeling of unease that you should sort your clothes out.
The problem is, you don’t know where to start.
It seems rather overwhelming.
You have lots of clothes in your wardrobe.
Most of which you don’t wear.
You think you look ok.
But deep down you’d love to look better.
Amazing even.
Then you wonder if looking amazing is for other women.
Maybe even you wonder if they deserve to look good.
And you don’t.
So, you carry on, wearing the same rotation of clothes every day.
But it’s not an intentional capsule wardrobe of items you love.
It’s an unintended selection of clothes chosen because.
- Because they are easy to wear
- Because you have worn them recently
- Because they are old favourites
- Because you fit into them.
So you manage each day. And you look ok, but deep down you know you could look better.
Is this you?
Deep down you ask yourself what happened to that happy, carefree woman who used to love choosing her clothes each day.
Or maybe you have never really known what to wear or what suits you. You presume that it’s a gene-type. Either you were born with the look great every day styling gene. Or you weren’t. And you weren’t. Or so you think.
The good news is that good personal styling relies on organisation not inspiration. And organisation can be taught.
Wouldn’t it be great to wake up each day and look forward to getting dressed?
Wouldn’t it be amazing to always have something to wear that you love?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a closet full of clothes that fit you?
Wouldn’t it be great to feel really good about yourself?
Wouldn’t it be really great to look and feel really amazing, every day?
The really great news is that overcoming wardrobe overwhelm is really easy to achieve.
Imagine how you will feel when you realise that having an amazing wardrobe full of clothes you love is not just the privilege of the super rich or the celebrity world?
Imagine how you feel when you are able to pull out outfit after outfit, that you love, from your wardrobe.
Doesn’t it feel exciting? And calming at the same time?
You don’t need more clothes to look and feel better. What you need is an easy to follow, step by step process to achieve the following three areas:
Overcome Overwhelm
I know this feeling so well. Feeling overwhelmed is exhausting and discouraging. In the past I have felt overwhelmed by what to wear, when clothes don’t fit, when I leave getting dressed to the last minute, when I feel that I’m not looking my best.
Feeling overwhelmed about what to wear and the state of your wardrobe is an emotion that is easily swept under the carpet. But sweeping it under the carpet doesn’t remove it from your brain. It remains there as an undercurrent.
You carry on getting dressed each day, but all the while there is this nagging feeling that you want to wear something else, or that you wished you could look so much better than you do.
Overcoming overwhelm is a step by step process that we teach at Working Frocks.
Our step by step process will take you out of overwhelm. Once you are out of the overwhelm ocean, you can set sail for much sunnier shores: start to create a wardrobe of clothes that you really love and implement a process to keep your wardrobe serving you each and every day.
How to make a start
Our second area: When you are learning how to detox your wardrobe, making a start is so important. Take action over just thinking about the changes that you want to make. It may seem daunting at first. Divide your tasks into bitesize chunks. By completing small, easy to achieve tasks you will soon see progress, which will encourage you to continue.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be
The third area. A useful tool when starting a wardrobe detox is to evaluate where you are now with where you want to be.
Where you are now means where you are in your life, what your lifestyle looks like and what clothes you are wearing for this lifestyle.
Where you want to be addresses two areas:
- Whether you want your life to continue as it is now – are there tweaks you want to make? Do you want to see friends more often? Move house? Go out more? Exercise more? Be in nature more? (Subject to Covid-19 and when we will be let out and can go and see people again.)
- Where you want to be addresses the clothes you have to lead the life that you want.
Keep or Ditch – Learn how to evaluate
What to do with our clothes
Deciding what to do with our clothes can stop us in our tracks and prevent us from making the progress we would like.
Why is it so difficult to make decisions about what to do with our clothes?
- Emotions are wrapped up with our clothing – both good emotions and sentimentality.
Emotions such as “I wore that when……”, “I bought it when I was….” are very strong emotions and very tied into the garments themselves.
Sentimentality – I still have my wedding dress in my wardrobe – do you? Are there some items of clothing you just can’t bear the thought of parting with? You might not wear them anymore, but that’s not the issue for you. The issue that the memories that they evoke are powerful And that stops you from making a decision about whether to keep or part with the garment. - Guilt – You may have bought a very expensive items, say a jacket, and never worn it. Or not worn it very much. You feel guilty. You felt guilty at the time of the purchase. That guilt is now compounded because you’re not even wearing the jacket. Each time you spot it, in your wardrobe, you feel guilty. But indecision traps you from moving on.Someone once said to me, about a relationship break up, “one person’s leech is another person’s lily”. It made me laugh. What applies to boyfriends also applies to jackets. Learning how to keep or ditch is a really valuable skill and can easily be taught. Once you’ve learned it and implemented it your wardrobe will start to look like you want it to look. Your wardrobe won’t magically transform on its own, but you can learn the skills to create the wardrobe, and the outfits that you really want in your life.
Common misconceptions about good wardrobe management
There are common misconceptions about having a wardrobe that works for you and outfits that you love to wear. People think that looking amazing every day is about having a lot of money to buy designer clothes. Or they thank that having a leisurely life style allows for lots of time to spend organising your wardrobe.
Other people think that you need a supermodel figure to fit your clothes well and look amazing each day.
While all of these are lovely to have, they are not necessary.
You don’t need a lot of money to have the wardrobe of your dreams.
You don’t need a leisurely lifestyle to spend enough time organising your wardrobe.
And you don’t need a supermodel figure to look and feel amazing in what you wear.
I’ve never been or had all of those three and women always comment on what I am wearing, how I look, and who I have dressed who looks amazing.
If you have enjoyed reading about Day 1, you can read about Day 2 here, How to be the star of your wardrobe
The final post in the series, Day 3 is available now, here: How to maintain wardrobe health
See you there!
