Organizing the closet - in two parts...

As I continue to wait for sock yarn to arrive, I've been busying myself with some organizing projects.  Nothing major.  Just as the spirit strikes, I clean out a cabinet or drawer and set it to rights - eliminating some things that have just become clutter. 

I've been lately inspired by this video:

Part 1

At the moment, I have the idea that I want to finally try minimizing the stuff in my part of the closet to just stuff I actually wear.  

I don't know who "they" are, but "they" say we tend to only wear 20 percent of what is actually in our closets.  I'm pretty sure that percentage is made up, but it's certainly true for me that most of what's in my closet doesn't seem to get worn.  At least not very often.  Why does this happen?   

A few things don't get worn because they don't fit quite right, but most things that never get worn more than a few times, I'm thinking I just don't like for one reason or another.  But then again, I bought them - so I must have liked them once upon a time. 

Why I find myself once again tired of pushing an unknown number of unworn clothes out of the way as I return to the closet the same 5 or 6 t-shirts, 3 or 4 sweaters, 3 yoga pants, and 2 or 3 pairs of jeans from the laundry over the course of a week, I really don't understand.  But I'm ready for a change.  

And given the number of YouTube videos that exist on this topic, I'm not alone in feeling this way.

There are different challenges out there for tackling this problem of having more clothes than one evidently wears.  

One idea is to pull everything out of the closet, and after a week or so the only things that go back into the closet are the things that were worn. 

And there's the trick of putting things in the closet on a hanger hung backwards on the rod, turning the hanger around only after wearing and returning an item.  After a set amount of time, it becomes clear what never gets worn.  

These are clever ideas, but I think I can skip this step.  My closet is fairly organized so I already know what I not wearing.  I see the same unworn things in their same spots every day.

So it feels like the question for me is what do I want to keep, along with how much do I need or want to keep? 

In an attempt to answer this question, some people whittle their closet down to just 30 items (some people include shoes in this number) for an experiment like this.  That seems unnecessarily spartan to me, so I am going to be realistic...  Assuming I actually have a week's worth of different outfits that actually fit me, and I like enough to wear in public,  I think whittling it down to just whatever clothes make up those outfits would be completely workable.  It's all I'm wearing at the moment anyway!  

The strategy in the video above is to only take out of the closet what I like, what fits, what I can wear comfortably.   Easy enough.

Once those things are out, I'll take a hard look at everything else and make some hard decisions.  I will have two choices - 1) to donate or 2) to put items I'm not sure of in a "time will tell" box.  

Okay.   Here I go...

Part 2:

So...  the above was written on Sunday, I believe.  I'm happy to say I accomplished the job over the course of two days.  It really wasn't that hard, but life interrupted and I needed to break the whole thing down into a couple of sessions.

No before and after photos.  You're just going to have to believe me when I say the closet hasn't looked this good since we moved in about 14 months ago.  I even managed to clear out (and put away) stuff inside two boxes full of odds and ends.  Odds and ends that didn't even belong in the bedroom, let alone in the closet.  There were also some some extra blankets and throw pillows that were being stored on the floor under the clothing.  Ugh.  That said, I did follow the steps in the video, and I was so excited by the improvement, I decided to put brighter lightbulbs in the closet. I don't mind seeing everything now!

I got rid of some things, but I also stored some items in a few "time will tell" boxes (the video explains this).  What I decided I wanted to keep in the closet got sorted by season better than it had been.  Some things (some tops in particular) that weren't getting worn, I realized just don't go with long pants I wear in the winter, so of course I wasn't wearing them.  They got hung up in another section of the closet with the summer capris I wear them with, and I'm not bothered by them at all now.  

For what it's worth, we don't have a huge closet.  It's a walk-in closet, but by today's standards it probably looks a tad small for two people to share.  But even at that, I probably have a couple of weeks worth of outfits, mixing and matching pieces, and just looking at it I can say that is plenty of clothes for me.  And I can still store some out-of-season clothes in there.  Granted, those out-of-season things are kind of crammed together, but that's okay.  I don't have to be able to see or easily access them for a few months.  I imagine I'll have another reckoning come spring, though. 

My reason for talking about the size of our closet and the amount of clothes I think I can be truly happy with, is that even though it's not an impressively large closet, it's clearly large enough to hold everything I need to wear - if everything in there is something I actually do wear.  

That's the goal. To only own clothing I actually wear. It really is a pretty simple concept, isn't it?  It may take a few rounds/seasons of this kind of sorting and purging, but I have hopes to someday actually have a wardrobe that fits in my closet.   With some room to spare, ideally...