I decided to start with the no brainers, the ones I knew without even thinking about it that I wanted to keep. These were the tops I wore every week-ish. My favorites. After taking those out of the stack and hanging them up, I turned back to my stack to decide what to get rid of.
This may have been the only time in my life when I did an honest double take. I turned back to the closet and counted the everyday tops I had just hung back up.
22
I had No-Brainer hung back up 22 everyday tops.
How many everyday tops does a woman with a working washer and dryer in the house need? My mom always said 8, "One for each day of the week, and one to wear while washing the other 7 (she had near 100 in her closet when she passed away)." Now, I may disagree a bit. I run the washer everyday, so theoretically, I could get away with 3-4.
But the point is, I had more than enough already. I gleefully turned back to the bed, picked out one ugly shirt (for painting), removed hangers, and donated well over 150 everyday tops!
And I have never missed one of them!
A couple years later, I read several articles about people choosing "uniforms." This is not dressing like nurses all the time, but picking one look to represent who you are and staying with that everyday. You don't have to think about what you are going to wear in the morning. One less decision to make. (Why Successful People Wear the Same Thing Every Day)
I decided I would go this route, so I removed all the tops that wouldn't match a simple black skirt or pants. This equaled exactly 1, lol. Then I bagan shopping for those simple black skirts and pants. When I had found enough of them (3 skirts) at my local thrift store, I donated all the rest of my skirts except one simple gray wool skirt for the very occasional use. When I needed shoes I looked for black ones.
This means from the waist down I wear black. My tops (and Hair clips :-) are where my wild colors are. I always know my clothes match and I look nice. So much less stress! AND my clothes now only take up about 3 feet of closet space, nice and loosely hung. Hubby simplified his clothes years before I did, and so now we are selling our dressers (we're keeping one for undies), and buying bookshelves and a couple nice chairs for our bedroom. Since we are both bookaholics, this will be a much better use of the space.
What could you do with the space if you reduced your clothes to just what you actually need?
Who Says We Need Changing Fashion, Anyway?
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