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Feb

20

Simplicity Challenge - Activity: Purge Clothing

My Closet as it Was
If you know me at all, you know that I love fashion. I love sewing clothing, studying couture, and buying and wearing beautiful things. I place a heck of a lot of value in my clothes as a result. I own beautiful, tasteful, expensive clothes that I adore and that I took a long time choosing to buy. I buy clothing like most people would buy art. There’s a lot of musing involved.

Scarves As part of the simplicity challenge I’ve set for myself, I’m working hard to get rid of a lot of things this month that I don’t need or use. As it goes, some of these things to get rid of will inevitably be clothes, shoes and accessories. And while it breaks my heart to see them go, I’m sure it’s best for me.

The physical pain of getting rid of clothing is immense, for me. It’s shocking how much I love the items that I don’t even wear at all. But my clothing collection is so massive now I can’t even live without walk-in closet because I need the space to fit all my clothing and accessories.

I finally decided to get mathematical about it all to save myself some grief. I tallied clothes by category. I didn’t count things like sweatpants, t-shirts for housework and sick days, or fleeces, socks or underwear. These stay until they prove themselves useless and I don’t have trouble parting with “cozy” clothing and pajamas.

Ordered By Quantity:

Camisoles, Blouses, and Oxfords: 57 (half of which are black)
Pairs of Shoes: 43 (28 of which are high-heels)
Shawls, Scarves, and Neck-Scarves: 40+
Skirts: 39
Cocktail, Summer, or Evening Dresses, and Gowns: 30
Sweaters: 19
Jackets, Blazers, and Coats: 13
Jeans, Pants, Shorts: 11
Dress Pants: 7
Suits: 4

Side note: As you can see, I don’t wear pants often - only 13% of the “bottoms” I own have legs
I figure I can get rid of most of my pants and many sweaters and camisoles. These will go up for sale on eBay within the week. I’m also going to do a purge of all of my “cozies” and let go of the less-favored sweatshirts, pants, and t-shirts; they’re just taking up space. These will go to the Goodwill.

Jewelry This list doesn’t yet touch on my jewelry, lingerie, or tights, leggings, and stockings. That is a whole other story - hundreds of items I don’t want to deal with… yet. I appreciate that I will HAVE to sometime this month, but I’m not going there just yet
Where to go from here?

This is the first step. I’ve separated out all the clothes I already know I want to get rid of into their own section of the closet. Throughout the next week I will take my time choosing other things that I feel I can let go of. This is a difficult process for me and not one without reflection.

After I’ve combed through all of my clothing, I will start taking pictures and listing the clothes for sale on eBay. Hopefully I can use the extra cash to snowflake some more money to my debt this month.

From here I need to take a close look at my shoes and then make a trip to Alexandra’s Design Consignment in downtown Seattle to sell some of the more expensive pairs. I may be able to get a good price for the Via Spiga boots and Manolo heels on eBay, but how well the bidding for a single pair of shoes will go on eBay is completely up in the air. We’ll see with that one, I guess.

Well - I’ve started! I’ve got a long road ahead of me, though. I’ll be fine - I just need to keep plugging away and letting go.