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FeedConquering the Closet
I'd like to welcome you to 2012. I can't say what the year holds for any of us, but so far it looks like it may be an interesting one. So sit back and hold on tight.
Like many folks, I like to clean out the closet to accompany the brand-new feeling of a new year. It seems right to me to start off the new year on a good foot, especially in my favorite flats I've been missing for six months. I keep thinking to myself: I keep wearing the same few things over and over again. And I'm right. I really wasn't sure what was in my closet, dresser, or giant pile of laundry until I went through everything last weekend. And I mean everything: last weekend, I did, no joke, eight loads of laundry and roughly 10 hours of work. If you're wondering why—yes, I do have that many clothes and none of them were put away correctly. So I followed my typical closet cleaning routine, which I'll describe in a minute, with a few exceptions, which I really needed to follow as they can be large pitfalls.
For starters, I tend to get very attached to clothes. This isn't at all unusual, but it's probably one of the largest reasons why I can't get anything in my dresser. I clean out my closet maybe two times a year and for the last several years the same few sentimental items kept sneaking back in. This time, though, I finally caved in and gave them away. I had a small pep talk with myself, and told myself I have my good memories in these clothes, it's time for someone else to have some good memories in them as well.
The second reason is turning a blind eye to clothes that need to be retired. I'm very guilty of throwing clothes into the washer, drying them, folding them, and putting them away. Unless something really stands out, I don't take the time to give them a good going over. Thus, I had a lot of clothes that had rips, missing buttons, or other problems taking up a lot of space. Missing buttons are fairly easy to replace, and there were a few rips that I could easily repair, but if it had holes in it, it was dontated to my dad's workshop rag collection. I was telling myself, “I only wear this under shirts, no one sees it,” but I decided not to take that excuse anymore. Ok, I'm lying. I made one excuse for my favorite green Banana Republic sweater. It had some moth holes in one of the elbows, but I found some cute matching plaid fabric and put on elbow patches. It looks great and I get lots of compliments on it.
Here is my basic closet cleaning formula:
1. To begin with, wash, dry, dry clean, fold, etc., everything. If you have the slightest idea it may be dirty, clean it. This makes cleaning everything out much easier. This is why I had eight loads of laundry and the matching high water bill coming due soon.
2. Set up four laundry baskets (or piles) for each of the following categories:
- Put away/hang up—for clothes you truly do wear often.
- Seasonal—those stray summer items, holiday sweater collections, and stuff you wear and use during its appropriate season, including formal wear.
- Give away—for stuff you know for sure you're not going to wear.
- The iffy pile—anything that doesn't fit, you haven't worn in 6 months, or otherwise don't know what to do with.
3. Put your clothes away accordingly. Put away your work scrubs and weekend jeans, and hang up your church dresses. Bag up the give away pile and give it away or take it to a consignment shop. Store your season items in plastic bins or those awesome vaccuum bags and shrink wrap them.
The hard part is taking care of the iffy pile. It's really hard to say how to weed the iffy pile out as we all have different lifestyles, so assess accordingly. I'm down three sizes from last March, and yet I'm terrified I'm going to gain back all that weight, so my iffy pile was full of clothes too big for me. I'm holding on to them just in case, and if they're still—hopefully—too big by summer, I'll give them away. If you have a lot of clothes that need repaired, think about how long it would take to fix it. I got rid of anything that would take longer than 15 minutes to fix. I also got rid of things I couldn't remember buying or haven't worn. I got rid of some clothes with the tags hanging on them, including a shirt I've never worn in the three years I've owned it. I only spent $2.97 on it, but what's the point in keeping it if I haven't worn it and probably won't? Look at everything and assess how it would fit into your lifestyle. The most important hint I can give before you start digging away is to focus on your current needs, and not your future ones.
Once you've gotten your closet cleaned out, congratulations. If you're looking for advice on how to organize it...I'm not the person to ask. For that, my best advice is to focus your closet and dresser on what you wear most, and put lesser-worn items in storage or in a spare closet. There's tons of information on the internet pertaining to organization so someone who is actually organized can give pointers and tips, not the scatterbrain who's still folding those eight loads of laundry.
