The Clothes Diet has come about after I started decluttering my house (and that's a whole other story). In regard to my wardrobe the decluttering process revealed a few things.
1. I held onto clothes for sentimental reasons. Often it was because I had been complemented when wearing the item in question.
2. I held onto clothes because I think that I will wear them but they really don't go with anything else and so the clothing stays in a drawer or on a hangar unworn.
3. I had a few pieces of clothes that I had bought and never worn. I assume I liked it in the store but for some reason didn't like it so much when I got home.
4. I would buy individual items that I liked, without much thought to what I had in my wardrobe and whether the item would work with what I had.
5. I wanted variety in my wardrobe so I would shop fairly regularly but because of budget constraints I bought inexpensive pieces. The better the quality the better the fit.
6. My wardrobe seemed like a mish-mash of styles, which made it difficult to put outfits together.
I am still in the process of filtering and removing items I no longer wear. Anyone who has ever done this knows that you can't just do it over a weekend. I have a system in place to track everything I wear in the next year. If I have not worn a particular item of clothing within the year (formal dresses exempt) then I will give it to Goodwill. That takes care of cleaning up my current wardrobe.
And then, The Clothes Diet. One of the basics of decluttering is making sure you don't bring things back into the spaces you have created. In this case, don't get rid of old and/or unworn clothes just to go out and buy new ones. My long term goal is to figure out my style and own fewer pieces, items of quality that I absolutely love and will wear again and again. To help me with that I thought it would make sense to take a hiatus from purchasing new clothes.
So, for the month of January, 2011, I will not purchase any new clothes or shoes. To some this is not difficult, to others it might seem impossible. I'm probably somewhere in the middle. I'm pretty sure I can do it with some forethought and control. If however, I do have to have a new piece of clothing there has to be a damn good reason...
