Wardrobe Management

by

Can You Remember Everything in Your Closet?

Do you think you could write down everything in your closet without looking?  I recently challenged myself to do just that after reading and article titled “Deep End: Clothing Analytics” on the new “Reasonably Presentable” blog.  Here are the basic instructions that I followed this past weekend:

  • First, write down everything you remember owning, including what color it is.  
  • Put the letter “A” by everything that you feel awesome in every time you wear it.  
  • Put a “W” next to the ones you wear all the time (of course, the definition of “all the time” can be very relative…).  
  • Then go wherever your clothes live and write down everything you forgot to write down.

In today’s post, I share my experience of doing the exercise outlined above, as well as what I learned from taking on that challenge.   I highly recommend that you read the entire article and try the exercise for yourself.  In addition to the instructions above, the author also shares what sorting through your nail polish collection can tell you about your wardrobe, which could be especially useful for some of you.

Continue reading →

by

How a “Rolling Capsule Wardrobe” Can Help with Both Closet Chaos and Personal Style

The following is a guest post from Dianne, who lives in Brisbane Australia.  This is the story of Dianne’s battle with clothing chaos and how she’s conquering it through the use of an unconventional capsule wardrobe that she created herself.

If you would like to be profiled in an upcoming installment of the “Stories of Recovery” series (you can be anonymous if desired), please connect with me to share your thoughts.

From Strict Budgeting to Bags Full of Clothes

I love finding bargains. After years of not having money to spend on myself as a stay-at-home mum with three children, I got a part-time job and found that I finally had some extra money to spend on me. This coincided with my losing 12 kilograms of weight. I then had a new figure, a new life, and some disposable income to spend on clothes.

After years of strict budgeting, I didn’t spend that much at first. I slowly started to cultivate my “boutique,” my own shop in my home. I began to buy more and more, and suddenly I became the person who went shopping for sales and came home with bags full of clothes. At some stage, it occurred to me that I was bringing in so much clothing that I couldn’t possibly wear it all.  However, I dismissed this thought, as I was stocking my own private store.

sale shopping

I shopped at sales and came home with bags full of clothes. 

Continue reading →

by

A Simple Tool to Help with the Keep or Purge Decision Process

Do you have things in your closet that you can’t decide whether to keep or purge?   Most of us have at least a few such items and sometimes we’ve been on the fence about them for months or even years.   Perhaps you’ve already tried the “first impression test” and still feel stuck, but you’re not ready to undertake a full KonMari Process just yet.   In today’s post, I’m going to share a quick and easy method to help you finally get off the fence and make a decision about those “maybe” pieces.

To use this process, you will just need one thing, a coin.   That’s right, you’re going to flip a coin in order to make your decision, but there’s a twist.   Which side the coin lands on is not nearly as important as how you feel about the outcome of the toss.  Let me explain, and then I’ll give some personal examples.

flip a coin

Can flipping a coin help you decide what to keep or purge?

Continue reading →

by

A Year Later: January-March 2015 Purchase Update

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows that I publish monthly accountability updates. These posts (see the most recent one here) include what came into and left my closet in a given month -and why, as well as how I’m doing with my clothing budget and item limit for the year.  It has been very helpful for me to do these updates, as they help me to stay honest and on track with my wardrobe and shopping goals. I will publish my February accountability update next week, but today I would like to introduce a new series that I will feature on the blog.

In past years, I have periodically reviewed my purchases to analyze which ones worked, which ones didn’t, and why (see examples here, here, and here).   Although these posts were helpful, sometimes I did them too soon after the time period I was reviewing, so I was not yet sure whether certain buys were good or ill-advised.   I can now look back at these purchase reviews and see that many of the assessments I made at the time were wrong.

Good or bad purchase

How do you feel about the items you bought a year ago?

Continue reading →

by

Wardrobe and Shopping Goals for 2016

I have mostly completed my wrap-up posts for 2015.  The only other post in that category I will be doing is a purchase analysis of everything I bought last year (see January through June review here), which I hope to share with you next week.  In my all-star, benchwarmer, and LIWI updates (part one | part two), I outlined a number of goals for my wardrobe and shopping for this year.   In today’s post, I consolidate all of those objectives, refine a few of them, and add a couple of new ones that I hadn’t previously mentioned.

2016 wardrobe and shopping goals

Budget

I am going to stick to the same clothing budget as I had last year, $2500 for the entire year.  It worked well for me to reduce my budget from 2014 to 2015 and I may reduce it further next year. But since I am still working on revamping my wardrobe after having refined my style over the past year and a half, I think that sticking to the same budget is my best approach for 2016.

Continue reading →