dressing to reflect your life no.3
the how to guides
photo credit. Margit Bantowsky Unsplash
use your new clarity and declutter
Once you know what you want your wardrobe to do for you, you can set about moulding it to your needs. This starts with the clarity that you hopefully acquired from the previous questionnaire. As I said in the introduction, we will all undoubtedly play various roles throughout our lives. We therefore need to balance the clothes in our wardrobes to cover all sartorial eventualities as they present themselves to us.
Perhaps you have already achieved that to a great extent and just need to do an odd refresher every so often. Maybe it is something you intend to do but never actually get around to? Or perhaps you look in the wardrobe every morning and wonder what on earth you are going to wear? This supports the age-old conundrum of lots of clothes, but nothing that feels right for that moment.
Decluttering might sound like a really radical thing, but at its simplest it means getting rid of things that you don’t like for whatever reason. If you don’t wear something (again for whatever reason), it doesn’t fit, isn’t flattering, is too old or damaged or broken, why are you storing it? This is not a trendy new idea, it is something that people have always done that has just been adopted as a practice and is seen to have wide ranging benefits. A variation of spring cleaning if you will.
Once you have had clear out you will be reminded about what you already have, maybe unloved or forgotten, hidden behind, or under everything else. You will be able to see what you’ve got. You can then keep what you like and that fits your lifestyle, and either store or get rid of the rest. While decluttering is mostly associated with having too much stuff, sometimes women have too few clothes. Perhaps all day is spent in a uniform and therefore there is only the need to have items for a couple of days of the week.
Having a regular declutter and gaining clarity about your lifestyle is a really useful exercise, whatever the appearance of your wardrobe. If you have few items then it can encourage you to look at them in a different way, and perhaps find new variations to put together for an outfit. You might also find some obvious gaps that you can fill with the knowledge that you are not adding things for the sake of it.
Photo credit. RDNE stock project Pexels
The things you don’t want, or that don’t fit in with your lifestyle can be sold, donated, or recycled as you see fit. Just because something doesn’t work for you and your life doesn’t mean that it won’t be ideal for someone else. Explore the many online sales sites, or perhaps you could get together with a couple of friends and have a sale or a swap?
My suggestion for storing things is to identify those items that you love, things that hold special memories, or things that you only need to wear on rare occasions. You will undoubtedly want to keep some items with a sentimental attachment, and I absolutely think you can and you should. Your clothes should bring you joy, whether you wear them today or invoke special memories from the past. Keeping these items well, in a safe storage away from your everyday outfits will preserve them better, and will create some much needed space.
milly’s top storage tips:
There are many variations of storage bags and boxes, vacuum bags and plastic click boxes out there. Find a method that works for you, and launder or clean the items before packing them away. Re-use plastic bags or buy some tissue and perhaps consider some moth protection before you seal the package.
Can you find room in the loft, the spare room or under a bed to store things? If you have sorted and packed them well, they will be fine anywhere that you deem as safe.
The important thing is that the clothes you don’t wear but want to keep are out of the way of the items you need for your day to day life.
Use the whole experience to remind yourself what you have, and what is hidden and forgotten. Perhaps now is the time to clean and store your clothes for the season just gone somewhere other than in the centre of your wardrobe?
Make notes about things you might like to replace because of the poor condition, bad sizing, or unsuitability for your life now. Keeping items for the sake of it, takes up space, and is a daily reminder that you will need to sort them one day. Make that day today!
Finally, make a pledge to yourself that you will buy more consciously in the future, and avoid the overwhelm that you have just sorted. Just because you now have some space, doesn’t mean that it needs to be filled!
Continues in No.4…
All rights reserved. Milly Churchill asserts the right to be identified as the author of this work.