How to love your closet by having less

A woman’s guide to thoughtfully curating her closet so that she loves and wears the majority of her pieces.

5 minute read | By Maddison McKinley

This article is designed to answer the following questions:

How do I create a closet that’s filled with clothing I love?
How do I maintain a great closet?
How do I purge my closet?

Refined Closet Cycle: Organize [Daily Inspirato]

So you want a new wardrobe?

If you're like most women you have a lot of clothing, but none of it is working together like you want it to.

If you’re also like most women, you only use 20% of your closet regularly.

So get rid of the 80% and we’re good, right? Well you could–but who’s to say you’ll get rid of the right clothing?

How to get rid of clothing you’re not wearing, or don’t like to wear

In order to break the cycle of adding hangers to a closet that isn’t working, stop buying. Force yourself to work within your current closet.

Doing this will allow you to pinpoint the clothing you actually wear, while trying out new combinations within your current closet.

This shopping hiatus will make you better informed the next time you add a piece of clothing to your wardrobe.

The 4th article in this series will walk through strategies to keep in mind when you’re shopping for new pieces so that you can fill your closet with items you love to wear, and make you feel good!

The Refined Closet Cycle

Below is the cycle that women who love their closets experience each day.

Some of these women also perform regular “purges” (as they say). If you don’t wear more than 50% of your closet, start with a purge.

After doing so, maintaining your happy closet through the process illustrated below is simple.

**[Refined Closet Cycle] Consistently Curate**

This is all a process in refinement. Once you’ve gotten rid of the sections of your closet you don’t wear, it’s time to do some fine-tuning by keeping yourself honest.

Consistently curate

Sometimes we buy things and wish that they looked a certain way on us so badly that we actually imagine it. I call this theory “mind, mirror, reality”, meaning my mind is seeing one thing, the mirror is telling a different story, and reality is the most truthful of all three.

As soon as your mind or reality tells you something isn’t serving you any longer, donate or consign it. This is the golden rule for knowing when to get rid of items.

Now that you’ve refined your closet to the pieces you most consistently wear, get rid of the purge mentality, and go with the consistently curating mentality.

“The more in-tune you are with what is and is not working on you, the better style and closet you will have.”

[Refined Closet Cycle] Organize

Closets that are cluttered, messy, or packed-to-the-max make picking out a look nearly impossible. Closets are like creative spaces, and like most creative spaces, they need to breed creativity rather than stifle it. Clutter stifles creativity.

Try organizing your closet by type of clothing (pants, skirts, etc.) and then within each category, organize by color. While this process takes thought and a little bit of time, you won’t believe how much easier it is to pick out an outfit.

Organizational pro-tip: Make sure that every time you do laundry you place the clothing back on hangers/in drawers immediately.

Refined Closet Cycle: Dedicate Time [Daily Inspirato]

[Refined Closet Cycle] Time

It’s the most precious resource of all, and improving your wardrobe demands some of it. But before you stop reading because you know there’s no way in HELL you’re giving up your time, I think dedicating some time to your closet might not be as difficult as you’d think.

Many women wake up in the morning and grab the first few things they see (particularly the moms out there–no time!), but, I think it’s worth trying to give your looks some thought:

The night before
The weekend before a week

[Refined Closet Cycle] Be Inspired

If you are feeling a lack of inspiration, there are resources out there ready to help.

Challenge yourself with a new outfit component each day (e.g. belt, high waisted pants, red, etc.) to try and get out of your comfort zone.
Scroll through hashtags on Instagram like #ootd or #fashion to get a sense of what others are doing with their looks.
Observe how those around you are dressing (e.g. your colleagues, people on the street, folks in the grocery store, etc).
Browse traditional fashion outlets like Elle, Vogue, InStyle who have fun street-style photographs and out-of-the box ideas using the latest trends.

[Refined Closet Cycle] Keep Notes

As you see something you like, or feel like X, Y, or Z would make your closet improve, take note of it.

I have a notes app on my phone (Simplenote) that I use regularly for just this very thing.

This will come in handy when you eventually go back to shopping.

Refined Closet Cycle: Keep Notes [Daily Inspirato]

[Not illustrated] How to successfully clean out your closet

If you wear 50% or less of your current wardrobe, I recommend that you purge the items you don’t wear anymore. After this initial exercise, you should have gotten rid of AT LEAST 30% of your closet.

This might be the most difficult part of the process, but your style and closet with thank you.

Turn the hangers

If you’re feeling stuck on what to get rid of, give the “turn the hanger around” concept a try. If you haven’t heard of this, it’s the idea that you turn all of your hangers around so that you can keep track of which pieces you actually wear after a given period of time (~30 days).

Expel the unmentionables

You have clothing that is in your closet right now that you’re a) not wearing and that you b) should purge immediately. I am going to break this clothing out into different categories I’ve heard most frequently.

Aspirational

“I’ll wear it one day when I get back to that size”

Sentimental

“But I have memories with it!”

Costly

“I spent wayyy too much on that”

Gifted

“Grandma gave it to me”

Utilitarian

“I wear it because I need it, but I don’t necessarily love it”

Load it up!

Take a sturdy bag and load it up with all of the clothing that fits into any of the above categories.

Place the bag somewhere for a month (your car, hallway, garage).

After 30 days, donate or consign the bag of clothing. If you can go a month without it, you don’t need it.

Scarcity mentality

If you have a scarcity mentality, keep in mind that you are improving your closet by getting rid of this clothing.

Also know that you’re not doing yourself any favors by keeping aspirational pieces in your closet because it’s psychologically damaging (and you know it).

COMPLETE

Thank you for reading “Series 3: How to love your closet by having less”.