I’ve gone from having clothes overflowing from my double wardrobe,
massive chest of drawers and ottoman, as well as strategic piles
of clothes around the house (I
wrote about the ridiculous amount of clothes I owned here) to wearing just 21 items for the last two months and 35 all year. I’m really
enjoying how clear my wardrobe looks now.
Doesn't it just fill you with a sense of calm?
I’ve read loads of blogs recently about what a beautiful and
cathartic experience an extreme clear out of your wardrobe is. I’m here to say it wasn’t like that for me.
Those people who felt exhilarated and like their rooms
suddenly had more light are potentially aliens and definitely better at this
than me. Because when I finished I just felt knackered and grubby, and incapable
of taking another decision ever.
For me it was two days of self doubt, punctuated by gin
drinking and despair. Followed by about three weeks of revisiting the stuff I
decided to keep and reducing it bit by bit.
Everyone says you should start by getting all your clothes
out of the wardrobe (& wherever else you keep them) and putting them in a
pile. So that’s what I did. I created a small mountain of clothes on the bed
which my dog immediately decided looked like the most comfortable place in the
house and planted herself on top of. This meant that every time I wanted to
look at a piece of clothing I had to negotiate with an increasingly resentful
dog who just wanted to sleep on the super comfy new bed I’d made for her.
Anything that had direct contact with Squeak had dogs hair
on it which meant that rather than having a keep/ don’t keep pile I had a
rather more complicated system of keep, keep needs washing, keep needs dry
cleaning, throw away, resell, resell needs washing, resell needs dry cleaning –
it was mayhem. And I hadn’t properly delineated the piles so they kept drifting
into one another.
Deciding what went in which pile was pretty hellish. Stuff I
totally hated, or had holes in was easy, but everything else not so much. It
turns out I’ve got a load of things that I had weird guilt about the idea of getting rid of - Because who in
their right mind gets rid of a perfectly serviceable striped t-shirt – even if
they do have another 20 that are practically identical? And cashmere, you can’t
throw away cashmere, or silk- they are investments – they are supposed to last
a lifetime. And things I wore in 6th form – I must love them right? Otherwise
why would I still own them 17 YEARS later?
Long story short at the end of my first attempt at de
cluttering my wardrobe I’d got the equivalent of a large suitcase worth of
stuff to sell, 2 binbags to throw away, and 2 extra large vacuum pack bags
designed to hold a families worth of duvets and pillows of things that I ‘needed’
to hold on to for next year (in case you are wondering there were 11 striped
tshirts in that bag – because you know there might come a time when you can’t
go into ANY SHOP ON THE HIGH STREET and find one).
So attempt number 1 was a bit of a fail.
But over the next couple of weeks I got there. What worked
for me was two things.
The first was instigating a strict rule – once something
went in the sell pile it couldn’t come back out. This just meant I’ve
emotionally divorced myself from anything in those piles and have happily
started to sell them without looking back.
The second was that I didn’t let myself put any of the stuff
I was saving back into my drawers or cupboards. They had to stay vacuum packed
and in my bedroom. And those vacuum packs are huge and ugly so that was a
hugely motivating factor over the next few weeks.
I grew to hate the sight of those bags, and so finally I
made a deal with myself. I was allowed to put aside some clothes for next year,
and I’d let myself use two of my drawers to put them in. Everything I wanted to
keep had to fit in those drawers, and if it didn’t then it’d have to go in the
vacuum pack and I’d have to keep the pack in sight of my bed all year.
Let me tell you it is much easier to get rid of a striped
t-shirt when it is a choice between getting rid of it or living with the first
thing you see every morning being a plastic and beige monstrosity filled with
guilt clothes.
So those are my clear out tips:
·
Once you’ve decided something can go don’t look
back
·
If you have to own storage make it ugly – that way
you are motivated not to need it!
Remember if you are having a clear out you can raise money
for Contact a Family by selling your clothes on ebay and donating some or all
of the sale price. It’s really easy and ebay donate the money for you
automatically once the sale goes through. I wrote a helpful how to guide if you
want to give this a go.
Alternatively you could just sponsor me to keep going here.
And finally for all you rule checkers here is what I wore on
days 52,53 & 54
Take care folks,
Ed x
