To Purge or Not To Purge . . .

Welcome to my closet! What does it say about me that I have twice as many black, gray and white clothes as colored? BORING.

Please don’t judge the insanity of hanging the clothes by color.  Or having all the hangers facing in the same direction.  It’s a bit OCD, I know, but it works for me.

Last week I FINALLY cleared out my summer clothes and hung up all of the long sleeved sweaters and shirts I’d been grabbing from plastic bins under my bed since it finally decided to turn cold.  This changing of the wardrobe is a twice yearly process that is the product of a too small closet and my need to purge regularly.

After having the same conversation in the past two weeks with two different people concerning ‘closet purging’ , I thought I’d share my process. 

Here’s how it goes down: 

I begin by taking sections of clothing down at a time.  I sort through each piece of clothing while asking myself three questions: 1) Have I worn it in the past year? 2) Is it ill fitting, stained, torn or otherwise worn in such a way that it’s not mendable or worth keeping? 3) Do I love it?

Depending on the answers to those three questions, I make three piles – the clothing in good condition that I am not going to keep goes in the ‘To Donate’ pile, the stained or unmendable clothing goes in a ‘To Toss’ pile {not many items make this pile}, and the clothes I’m keeping get neatly folded and put in the plastic bins under the bed until I get them back out in a few seasons.

No matter how many times I complete this process, there is always a pile of clothing at the end to be donated.  This could mean several things. 

Maybe I’ve lost weight. I had a lot of clothing this time that was from last winter when I was still nursing Ollie.  I was bigger.  My chest was bigger.  Those clothes dwarf me now.

Maybe I’m fickle about clothes.  I have a hard time reworking outdated trends into my wardrobe.  Sometimes I’ll stare at a piece and wonder “What was I thinking?” I guess it’s a good thing I don’t buy expensive clothes.

Maybe sometimes I wear a favorite into the ground.  You know what I mean – the armpits become sketchy, the color fades from so many washings, the shape becomes an amorphous blob.

Maybe I’m just brutal about getting rid of things I don’t use.  Especially when I know there are other people who could be wearing them.  I have no emotional attachment to clothing – I don’t want to be the person who keeps a sweater from 9th grade because I got my first kiss while wearing it.

And maybe a lot of it has to do with liking a tidy closet.  Always have. I used to clean my closet out on my own when I was in 4th grade.  I’m weird.

Are you a closet purger?   Or is your closet overflowing with clothing that you do not wear, do not fit into, do not NEED?  This is a great time of year to go through your closet and weed out the nonessential. Someone else could use those clothes!

Tell me how you handle your closet.