Clean Out Your Closet

“If you want to improve your life immediately, clean out your closet. Often it’s what we hold onto that holds us back”. -Cheryl Richardson

Most days we open the doors to our closet, grab the same shirt and pants, and shut the door. We ignore the clothes draped on hangars that haven’t seen the light of day in months. We disregard the boots we never wear because they are a bit too tight around the calves. We neglect the baseball caps flung up on a shelf haphazardly because well, truth be told, we don’t really like wearing hats. We overlook the dresses stuffed in the dark recesses of our closet because we are not really a dress person but that one occasion might come up and then we’ll need a dress, so…

Do these statements sound familiar to you? *raises hand* Me too. As someone who really, really dislikes clutter and hanging onto things I needn’t hang on to, my closet was just one of those things that subconsciously bothered me but just kept putting off because I knew I’d have to devote some serious time to the project and I have a degree in procrastination. Not really, but I come from a long line of procrastinators. Our motto is we’ll get to it… eventually.

Finally one Saturday morning, my irritation with my closet got the best of me and I just started pulling everything out. I grumbled while doing it, but I took everything out. I do share a closet with my husband but I left all of his stuff in there because that is his to deal with as he sees fit. My focus was my clothing and accoutrements exclusively.

After I took everything out, I went through every single item of clothing. This is really the most important part right here: you must touch and pick up every single item of clothing. Look at it. Try it on if you have to. Is it stretched out? Does it have holes in it? Is it too small? Too big? If it is something you haven’t worn in over a year, are you ever going to wear it?

Try not to let guilt hold you back when it comes to getting rid of something. Case in point: the dress that I had worn for this past Easter, I did not enjoy wearing. Completely by coincidence, both my daughters happened to wear blue Easter dresses. I wanted to somewhat match them so I purchased a dress that had blue flowers woven all through it. The whole day that I wore the dress, I kept tugging at the hem because it was too short for my liking. Luckily I wore a long cardigan over to feel less exposed but again, I did not like the dress. I also realized that I do not enjoy wearing floral dresses anymore like I did many years ago, so this dress really had to go. I didn’t want to hold onto it simply because I had already paid for it and there was now a “sunken cost”.

It does bother me obviously that I bought this dress and am now donating after only wearing it once, but I have learned my lesson. I do not enjoy wearing short dresses and I do not enjoy wearing anything that is floral. Also, I had to contend with ingrained purchasing from when I was younger. When I was a kid, we always received a new dress for Easter every single year (things were different in the 80’s), and subconsciously I was trying to do the same thing with my kids and myself even though we all could have worn last year’s Easter dresses and been fine. Doing the work isn’t just physical sometimes. It can be psychological as well.

I got rid of quite a few things besides the aforementioned dress. Everything that was donatable was placed into bags ready to be alleviated at my nearest donation center. Everything that was just in the wrong spot was placed in the right room and/or closet. And everything that was trash… was placed in trash.

I tend to wear the exact same things over and over: a t-shirt and jeans, with or without a cardigan. Throw on a pair of Converse or Vans and I am done. I am ready to go. Wearing stripes or just solid colors is my favorite. And now my closet reflect that. It reflects me. Every item in there is truly something I will wear. I could probably pare down some of my t-shirts and I will as I continue to reevaluate what is actually being worn and what I think is being worn. And now that my closet has been condensed and minimized, I will readily be able to see on an ongoing basis what needs to go.

I now also have peace of mind. My closet no longer stresses me out. It is now not in the back of mind that I should really do something about my closet. It is done. I don’t even think about my closet now.

And you can’t put a price on that.