How to detox your wardrobe
if your clothes rails are bursting but you feel you have 'nothing to wear', it's time for a serious closet cleanse...
Nine steps to cleared closets and sartorial splendour.
1 Get it all out
Remove all your clothes and accessories from any cupboards, drawers or closets and group everything like with like. This way you can see exactly what you’re dealing with. So all trousers in one pile, jeans in another, t-shirts, coats, pants, the lot. All in piles. Shoes too. What do you have multiples of? Do you genuinely wear them all?
2 Get honest
Item by item consider, if this was hanging in a shop right now, would I buy it? Covet it? Wish to part with a proportion of my precious life energy for it (see Let’s talk about Money post, below)? If no, then onto the donate/sell pile it goes. Also check everything for fit and comfort. It helps to have a trusted friend or sibling to help with this bit. Someone who can check your rear view and go, actually no, this is not your best look.
3 Do you really need new
There’s lots on the internet about only buying ‘Five key pieces’ this year. Do you even need that many? I admit, when I was still editoring, I would routinely schedule to purchase a new coat, bag and boots every Winter regardless of what I already owned. It was just what you did. I also had to run the gauntlet of the ELLE magazine office to get to my own, so I succumbed to a healthy dose of feeling the need to ‘keep up’, too. But as I discuss in last month’s Let’s Talk about Money post, how much do we buy as compensation for frustration, unhappiness, boredom? I left the job, I stopped shopping. Neither temptation nor need remained, only reality, which was that I already had enough clothes.
4 Allow for a little treating though
But this can be new knickers or a pristine white t-shirt, not the latest catwalk sensation. Spend on the things you wear everyday. My biggest thrill last year was snapping up some new vest tops in the sale, and indulging in a grey cotton hoody that I’ve worn practically every day since. I even run in it. New pants come a close second, especially as these can tend to get a bit ragged without us even noticing.
Let's talk about money
Talking about money can stir up all sorts of unwanted feelings. Combing through every penny you spend can be painful, embarrassing even. This is because we have an emotional relationship to money, which in turn is influenced from many, often unconscious, directions.