Closet cleanses should be undertaken somberly and consistently. As a new season is budding, as a new life calling is dawning, as you find yourself glazing over at the threshold of your wardrobe's abyss, all of these indicate optimal conditions for a purging.
Below are specifics to ensure a safe, successful procedure:
Dedicate a large portion of ante meridian to it, mornings with the blinds drawn provide ample natural light, but if you must use post meridian, ensure you have sharp, clean, distributed lighting. Either way, find a thicket of uninterrupted hours.
Although closet cleanings can be done in intervals, an uninterrupted push actually aids your ability to purge. First seeing all the clothes in one day allows you to quickly rank the best and worst. Second, seeing all your clothes in a single day may induce a little emotional nausea. Hopefully this disgust is stronger than any emotional attachment, allowing you to purge what is poisoning your closet.
As this is a somewhat intense procedure, let's do what we can to make it as lovely as possible. Wash and style your hair, but leave off the makeup. That way it won't induce unnecessary dry cleaning and you'll be able to see how different chromatics affect your complexion. Finally slip your best dainties, including any shapers that you regularly wear, under some loungers.
Once you're ready, prepare your environment. Allow the melodies of a dewy fresh anthem to twinkle around you. Fix yourself a refreshing tonic: sparkling water, ginger lemonade, minted honeydew juice. Personally I prefer listening to Madeleine Peyroux with a dainty cup of herbal egyptian licorice.
While you pour your beverage, fill a second glass, because you'll need a friend. Not that really nice friend who praises everything you do. No, we want the chronically honest friend, the teenage daughter, or the opinionated mother. Spouses can be good with the honesty, but they lack patience. And occasionally the process can result in temporary marital malaise. If friends are not readily available, make sure you have, at the least, a full length mirror positioned adjacent to your closet, capable of capturing anterior, profile, and posterior views.
Make a list of all the roles in your life: mrs. mother, madame wife, dr. professional, and how you would ideally like to feel in each of these roles. When I enter my workplace, I want everyone to assume I spellcheck my e-mails. Or I want my children to perceive that my household is not the kind of place where clearing your nose on the furniture is proper. Or I want to feel pretty enough for passé civilities like opened doors, extracted chairs, gloves, and handkerchiefs.
Get five bins, trashbags, or wheelbarrows, tomorrow we will show live footage of the actual dissection, analysis, and cleansing of a closet.
The 5 Piles
1. Keep: When you walk by the mirror in these items, it should compel a brief pause, during which a smile flutters across your face. It doesn't have to be fancy, but it does have to flatter.
2. Archive: Are your winter boots currently residing in company with your flip flops? For shame, keeping seasonally distinct items in a single closet (even in Arizona) not only makes for fashion overwhelm, but it also makes your clothes very sad. It's like serving tuna with peanut butter, it just isn't right. Now for those items that you loved upon purchased, proceeded to wear for a straight fortnight, and in consequence is now prematurely jaded, I suggest archival. Archive all that is tired, seasonally inappropriate, or just inconclusive. Then reassess in 3-6 months, and ditch anything you're still not ready to wear immediately. Don't underestimate the thrill of fashion reunion.
This is not however a dumping ground for fashion memorabilia. If you don't plan to wear it within the calendar year, take a picture of it and donate it.
3. Repair: You have exactly five days to go to the dry cleaner, cobbler, or tailor with these items. If it's not urgent, it's not important enough to fix.
4. Give-Away: Donate items that don't fit your body or style but are in good condition. If you are having a difficult time parting with an item that no longer flatters your figure, find a specific friend to give it to. Or better yet, organize a clothing exchange, in which friends can bring all their items that are in good condition, but no longer employed by their closets.
5. Throw-Away: Items that are stained, torn, or otherwise beyond repair. Enough said.
Removal tips
- Hang all your garments backwards (with the hook facing open towards you.) As you wear a garment replace it in the closet in the reverse direction. If you have transposed hangers at the end of twelve months, item extermination should be executed.
- If you struggle to part with a well-loved, but useless item of attire, take a picture of it. Write a story to accompany the image, draw therapeutic hearts and stars around it if it helps, but abandon the actual item.
- Immediately place items that are soiled, torn, de-buttoned, or otherwise injured in a fashion ambulance. If they have not been hemmed, cleaned, or repaired within a week, consider how much these items mean to you.
- Find a home for items, which are in good repair, but do not match your current size, style, or fashion goals. Gift what is mismatched to a fashion deprived family member, friend, or charity. Host a clothing swap social.
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