Clothing is fun to buy and wear, and I love variety in my wardrobe. When I had access to a large closet and dresser, I’d almost always have them at full capacity. No matter the space I have, it always seems to fill. In order to make room for new purchases, I have to get rid of the old. This is usually accomplished by once or twice a year doing a round of purging.
I go through my closet and drawers, take everything out and toss it on my bed. I then put it all away, but evaluating each item for the following:
- Have I worn it in the last year?
- Does it serve a useful function in my wardrobe?
- Does it still fit?
- Is it something I will actually wear in the next few months?
- Is there anything annoying about it? Such as unusual fit, scratchy materials, I don’t have the proper bra to wear under it, etc.?
I then toss stuff that doesn’t meet my ‘keep’ criteria into a pile to donate somewhere locally. Some items, if they have value (such as formal wear, vintage clothing, high dollar specialty items, hardly worn stuff) I might put up on eBay – but generally, clothing doesn’t hold enough value to do so.
It’s a great process, and seeing the results of a trimmed down closet and drawers that easily shut is quite rewarding.
And now I have justification to go buy new things.
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However, last year I moved into a 50 square foot travel trailer for seven months as I traveled around the country. My closets and drawers were reduced down to about 1/15th the space I was used to. I did a massive purge with a lot of pre-thought about what I’d actually need to take with me. Unfortunately, the space I had didn’t leave room for a lot of variety in my wardrobe. I had only enough space to keep enough basics to meet the different climates I would be in. After a month or so, I knew I’d be bored wearing the same things over and over.
So, what I discovered as a solution to this was just to plan of refreshing my wardrobe on a regular basis. But this would far too costly to do on a regular basis by shopping in regular stores. I had already been introduced to thrift store shopping, and really enjoyed the process. But up until this point, thrifting was a fun hobby that helped supplement my wardrobe with cool things that I wouldn’t ordinarily buy at department store prices. So, I decided to try making thrifting my primary way of replenishing my wardrobe as I traveled.
I would plan to purge about 1/5th my wardrobe when I started to feel bored (or the climates changed) and then only restock my wardrobe with thrift store finds. It became a lot of fun to find the thrift stores in the various cities I was in, and having a constantly refreshed wardrobe for only $20-30 a trip. It worked really well for me, and I felt good about embracing the re-use philosophy.
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Now that I’m back in a regular house (with plans to hit the road again the future), I’m keeping the same model. I keep my wardrobe small, so that I can hit the road at anytime with minimal preparations – and I enjoy the pursuit of thrift shopping to inexpensively refresh my wardrobe. But I always donate something when I get something new.. keeping my wardrobe size the same.
Stay tuned for more tips on fun ways to keep your wardrobe refreshed..