Scope, 3 Steps to Pare Down Your Clothing

Today on Periscope I talked about how to simplify your wardrobe. I’m one who has too many clothes, I always have. The thing is I don’t follow fashion trends and I tend to wear the same things over and over in my closet, leaving about 70 percent of the items unworn and unloved. If you find you do the same as I do I’ve got some tips to help you pare down your wardrobe.

You can watch the video below to see the tips I shared or scroll down to read them. I love watching videos, but I know not everyone does. 🙂

Minimalist Wardrobe Tips

Start by Asking Yourself a Few Questions

What do I normally wear? What are my favorite colors to wear? What is most important to me in clothing, things like new fashion, comfortable clothing, or soft fabric? Do I need seasonal clothing? How often do you need clothing for a  special occasion or dressier clothing? You want to answer these questions before you even get to you closet or dresser. By knowing these answers, you can more easily sort without having to think too much.

Sort Your Clothing

Now that you have the answers to the above questions it time to sort the clothing. For me, I normally wear pants, jeans, and t-shirts. My favorite colors to wear are warm tones like browns, peach, gray, lavender, and light pink. Comfort is of high importance for me fashion isn’t important at all. I need cold weather clothing and hot weather clothing, I can improvise with what I have for spring and fall. I need dress clothing for church mainly.

Think about you answers with each piece of clothing you remove from the closet. Does it fit within your answers? If it does set it aside in the keep pile. If you are not sure place it in the undecided pile, only place items here if you are truly unsure. The clothing that doesn’t fit your answers goes to the donate pile. Of the clothing, you have left in the undecided and keep pile look at the items and remove any of them that you haven’t worn in the last year. Add those to the donate pile.

Return Clothing to Closet

As you are putting the clothing back take a hard look at the items and ask yourself, “Will I be wearing this in the next month?” If an item is a seasonal item then be sure to take that into account. Don’t get rid of clothing items you know you’ll use in the appropriate season. Pare down as much as you can as you are returning the clothing to the closet or drawers.

Now box up all items you are planning on donating. Keep them just a few weeks to a month, if you don’t need to dig through the box to retrieve the items you boxed to give away chances are you are safe at getting rid of them.

Laundry Schedule

One other thing to take into account is how often you do laundry. If you wash every day, you’ll need less clothing than if you wash once a week. We wash two to three times a week so I like to make sure we all have 4 pairs of pants and 4 shirts for each season. Along with a few cooler weather items and a few hot weather items. We keep our dress outfits to about 4 for each person since we dress up a little for church each week.

I don’t have my wardrobe down to a minimalist wardrobe yet but each time I do a purge, it gets to be less and less. I suggest if it’s too hard to do a full wardrobe purge for you, just purge at the end of each season. As the season comes to an end, purge any items for that season that weren’t used. After a full year of seasonal purging, your closet should look so much better.

What is a tip you could add to the ones above? Have you found something that makes it so much easier to purge your unwanted and unloved clothing? Please share your tips in the comments below.

[signoff]

If you’ve missed any of the Frugal Simple Living posts, you can follow this link to find all of them.