Spring Clean

Twice a year as the seasons change, I excitedly unpack the previous year's clothes and dump the outgoing season's into the storage bags.  It is always nice to greet old favourites again and the remainder, well they just get plonked back into the wardrobe.  Each morning rushing out to work I try and sift through countless items in order to put an outfit together the sheer numbers confusing me.  I had made the classic mistake of not editing my wardrobe at each season change and I had built up a collection of items which I never wear and whose sole purpose seem to be to hide the items which I love.


Yesterday I decided enough was enough, off I trotted to Lakeland for some storage bags and cedar squares and last night my wardrobe got decimated.  I had several piles on the go, keep, archive, which are things that one day I hope to leave to my daughter, winter clothes, stuff to be sold on ebay, a pile for the charity shop and finally a forlorn pile of items good for nothing but recycling.  Man it felt good.  Opening my t shirt drawer for example shows neat piles of hole free unstained and ironed tops, monday morning is going to be easy peasy.


Having a wardrobe cull can be frightening for many, especially in cash strapped times such as these.  I do feel however, that keeping your wardrobe to a neat workable minimum means you buy less as you can visualise outfits as soon as you open the wardrobe door, each garment now works a lot harder.  This does not mean you need to go to the extreme of a capsule wardrobe containing only 24 items, this is realistic only in the minds of magazines and Gok Wan, neither of which I would take too seriously.  Following some common sense guidelines should help you make sense of your wardrobes.

• An obvious start but first to go should be any items which are ripped or stained.  If you are keeping something thinking you will mend it, either do it right now or bin it. 

• Don't keep all your old tatty t shirts and leggings thinking you will wear them in bed or for when you are doing a dirty job.  Keep one or two by all means but be honest, how many dirty jobs are you planning on doing?  Keep them separate from the rest of your clothes.

• If you really love something and don't wear it much anymore, have an archive box.  Just keep it out of the main body of the wardrobe.  The only things you want here are items you do wear.

• Anything you don't wear, you think is quite nice but it never seems to get an outing, ebay it.  You are never going to start wearing it I promise you.  

• Do the same for your jewellery, shoes and bags.

• Once you have finished the clear outs, have a good try on session, spot what you need to plug gaps, I promise you it will be less than you think.  After my session I found the only thing I needed to pull several outfits together is a navy vest  and a pair of black city shorts.  A bit of a departure from the wish list I had planned.

Before you gasp in awe this picture is not my wardrobe it was taken off Practical Princess