Wardrobe Management

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The Wardrobe “Benchwarmer” Project

We all have favorite items in our wardrobes, things that we regularly reach for when getting dressed each day.  In contrast, there are other pieces that languish in our closets and rarely see the light of day.  Most people only wear 20% of their clothing on a regular basis, while the rest of what they own is merely taking up valuable closet space and leading to a false sense of having a large wardrobe.

It is one thing to think we aren’t wearing most of what we have, but it’s quite another situation to know this empirically.  The wardrobe tracking that I’ve done over the past two years has shown me the cold, hard truth of what I do and don’t wear.

Wardrobe “All-Stars” and “Benchwarmers”

I’d like to introduce two terms which I will use regularly in future posts:  “wardrobe all-stars” and “wardrobe benchwarmers.”   For my purposes (and you can, of course, create your own parameters), I have defined a “wardrobe all-star” as an item that gets worn eight or more times per year.  I know this is a fairly conservative distinction, and I would eventually like to be wearing my closet favorites far more often than that.  But for someone with a wardrobe of over 300 pieces, I think it’s a good place to start.

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The Cold, Hard Facts: What I Have

I did something yesterday that I probably should have done a long time ago… I took an inventory of my closet.  I decided that if I am really going to confront my compulsive shopping issues head on, I need to have all of the facts at my disposal.  I already looked at the cold, hard facts of my finances (how much I’ve spent on shopping over the past 10 years) and what I did and didn’t wear over the past two years.  Next, it was time to turn to my closet and really look at what’s in there.

january-2013-closet

Doing my closet inventory – Sprite wants to help!

Goal – A Manageable and Minimalist Wardrobe

One of my goals for 2013 (and beyond) is to create a more manageable and minimalist wardrobe filled only with items I love and wear.  My decision to buy less (only one item of clothing and one accessory per month) will help with that goal because it will keep me focused on quality over quantity.   As I wrote about in my post on shopping with limits, the constraints on my shopping will push me to be more selective about what I buy.  For something to be worthy of one of my two purchases per month, it needs to be at least an 8 on a scale of 1-10, and preferably a 10 if at all possible.

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The Cold, Hard Facts: What I Did – and Didn’t – Wear

In my last post, I took an honest and sobering look at my shopping expenditures over the past 10 years.  I didn’t like what I saw…   I learned that I have consistently exceeded my shopping budget for each and every year since I started to track the numbers.   In some cases, I spent over twice the amount I had allotted for clothing and related expenses.

Tracking What I Do and Don’t Wear

As I mentioned in the previous post, the financial numbers only tell part of the story.  For the past two years, I’ve been tracking how often I wear all of the clothes and shoes in my closet.  I started doing that in the hope that this awareness would help me to shop less and utilize what I have more effectively.

Sobering Truth – My 2011 Numbers

As 2011 drew to a close, I was depressed when I tabulated the numbers for how often I wore the items in my wardrobe.  I learned that:

  • I had 112 garments and 11 pairs of shoes which were worn either once or not at all! 
  • I had only 24 garments and 11 pairs of shoes that I wore eight or more times over the course of 2011.  Not a very good comparison…

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