How To Reorganize Your Closet So You Wear More

What % of  your clothes do you wear?

I estimate a pathetic number -- 10%!!

What's more pathetic -- there's about 20 feet of crammed rack space in my closet. The clothes I actually wear are hanging on a mobile clothesrack, taking up space on our bedroom floor, which I stub my toe on frequently. And the clothes catch cat hair. This picture is so wrong!

These unworn clothes cost money. I buy clothes often. I certainly buy fabric frequently. Yet I feel like I wear the same 5 things every week. In fact, I pretty much do. There's something very wrong with that.

Are you in a similar situation???

Clean the closet. Take stock. Be conscious of the patterns developing as you clean, and analyze what those patterns mean. Here are the steps I took:

1. Made 6 signs and placed them on the empty guest room floor:
1. KEEP - FITS NOW
2. KEEP - TOO SMALL
3. KEEP - SMALL REPAIRS
4. KEEP - REFASHION (SEW)
5. SELL
6. DONATE
2. I started to take all clothes out of my closet and stack them neatly in piles on the floor by the appropriate sign. I didn't worry about wrinkling the clothes because I was careful and they won't stay there long.
3. However I stopped piling clothes when I realized a huge amount was going under KEEP - TOO SMALL and I'd build a mountain. So instead, I moved all those clothes to one area of the closet. Ordinarily I'd recommend to be realistic and sell or donate the too-small clothes. However I purchased most of these clothes only 3-5 years ago after I lost weight and got back to the size I wanted to be. I stayed there for a few years. Then we vacationed in Italy and I ate and ate and ate and never stopped eating after we got back home. I love good food. I won't be shy about it. But it's time to get motivated to fit in all these clothes again. About 15 pounds should do it. Seeing this enormous amount of clothes, some still with tags on them, and thinking of what I paid, it makes me feel sick. I won't make a resolution because I don't believe New Year's resolutions motivate me. I am just finding my natural motivation.
4. Nearly all the KEEP - FITS NOW still fit on the mobile clothesrack. That's why they wound up there in the first place. Those are going back in the closet in the easiest section to access. The mobile clothesrack is moving out of the bedroom!
5. The KEEP - SMALL REPAIRS and KEEP - REFASHION (SEW) are going down to the basement sewing room. What's the difference? Small repairs are holes to fix, pants and sleeves to shorten. Waistbands to take in. Refashion are more creative projects. There's a big pile of sweaters that could be reshaped from boxy to curvy. Or cut apart and pieced together in different combinations. We'll see. If I decide not to refashion any items here, they should go into DONATE or SELL.
6. DONATE - Because most of my clothes are pretty new and I made huge donations in past years before two separate inter-state moves, this pile is smaller this time. Also many DONATE items are Target or Walmart purchases. No Eileen Fisher here. Usually I would consider the more advantageous tax deduction of donating expensive brands, but right now I'd rather have cash than think about the tax bill in 2011. That's a conscious decision.
7. SELL - These are the too-small clothes that I honestly won't wear again even as I do lose weight. It's disheartening to see this pile become so big. As I said above, be conscious of patterns as you assign clothes to categories. There are definite patterns here. Most are purchase mistakes.

Patterns in The Sell Pile

1. Clothes not appropriate for my body shape. In particular, I put the jackets that just haven't felt right when I wore them in this pile. I didn't feel good in them. I fidgeted, adjusted, worried, shot dirty looks at myself when I caught my view in the restroom mirror at work. Ugh. They aren't cut to flatter a figure-8 shape. Many of them create bunches of wrinkles above my butt, and don't fit close enough around my waist. They make me look like a wide straight box. Not good. On someone else though, they may be just right.
2. Beige and white jackets and blouses. As I'm now above 40 and I think my skin tone is changing, it's harder to wear beige and white next to my face. While I once looked more rosy in these colors, now I look tired. So out they go. I am keeping light pants, and light t's and tanks with lower-cut necklines that I wear under a jacket or sweater.
3. Black pants. My wardrobe has been shifting more toward brown as a base color than black. I am keeping my favorite "too small" black pants for now, to wear as I lose weight.
4. Cotton and lined linen pants. I definitely don't like brushed cotton pants, I now see. I don't like the cotton that crunches and swishes when you walk. Structured linen that's lined, like a few Talbot's pairs now in this pile, don't give enough. They fit OK when I stand but don't have enough ease when I sit. I think they may work for people with less curvy figures.
5. Wide leg pants. This was a trend that didn't work for me. I'm too petite.
6. Polyester clothes. I made some quick inexpensive polyester purchases when I quickly needed a number of new work clothes. Nearly all these things are now in this pile. I wore many of them only a few times.
7. Colorful handbags. I tried to branch out into colors as accents. But bottom line, I like my handbags in browns and blacks and that's not going to change.

Patterns in the Keep Pile

1. Browns and colors that go well with browns. I love mixing colors with various browns.
2. Wool. I like wool pants and wool jackets -- crepe, flannel, worsted. Most are three season. Some are light enough for summer. I love wool. It always feels comfortable, and it gives enough to sit in it. I live in Chicago, so there's certainly a very long season when it can be worn.
3. Colors. Blues. Reds. Olives. Other greens. I like to wear a brighter color with a basic pant in brown, black or gray.
4. Simple shapes. Many of the structured, complex things with numerous pockets, etc. wound up in the sell pile. I'm 5'0" so simple seems to work better on me.

How to Wear More
Easy steps:

1. Getting rid of the SELL and DONATE items clears space in my closet and helps me more clearly see what I do wear.
2. Seeing the enormous KEEP-TOO SMALL section will motivate me and hopefully these items will soon be moving into the FIT section.
3. Getting the FIT clothes back in my closet and all together in one spot helps me see new ways to combine them so I don't feel like I'm wearing the same 5 things every week. It also exposes obvious holes that I can easily fill by sewing fabrics from my stash. No new clothing purchases needed!!
4. Because I thought very carefully about assigning clothes to piles, and noticed patterns as I assigned them, I now am aware of the patterns of what works for me and what doesn't. Buying and making only what works will help increase the percentage of clothes I actually reach for again and again.

I share these tips in hopes that they help you too!

OK, Maybe Not-So-Independent Style

Updating a previous post. I try not to be so imaginative as to copy an entire catalog look head-to-toe. But this time, I really don't care about lack of imagination. Why reinvent the wagon wheel.

Sundance T, it's here! I already have perfect dark dusty navy fabric and pattern to knock-off the skirt too (don't stashes come in handy). Project for this weekend when I'm back home. I also want to, carefully, bleach the T a little.

Liking Sundance's combo of beads and leather with pendant:

But can't justify the cost ($165 for beads & $110 for leather/pendant). The T is already an indulgence for just a T-shirt in these times. So, instead, Fire Mountain Gems has roundel beads of all colors for $3-$10 for 16" strand, leather, and a huge variety of silver pendants. There's even a simple chunky cross pendant that you can beat on with a hammer and run your car over it to make it look old. Ha. I'll probably go with a sterling silver prayer box pendant. Or maybe a horseshoe. And don't those of us who sew know where to find a closure similar to this:

Very likely to find a button like that in my stash too.

I remember wearing Frye boots to high school in the 1980s, a pair that my aunt gave me that she wore in the 70s. Heck knows where those are now. Maybe in a box in my parent's basement. During one of my many moves during and immediately after college, I left some things in a storage unit in one of the apartment complexes. There weren't many things in the unit. I remember a vacuum there. But there were some boxes along with the vacuum. I hope the Frye boots weren't there too. Because if not, there's always the hope they're in my parent's basement.

For this Fourth, we'll be walking around wine country (Finger Lakes Region and source of my fave, Riesling) and I like bare feet in the summertime. So, Frye sandals from Zappos ...

Independent Style for Independence Day

I love-love this T-shirt from the Sundance catalog. But it's way showy feeling for my taste. I would lighten this T by bleaching. I'd like a very faded effect, like this has been worn and washed and worn and washed again and again since 1976. Maybe even rip it and repair it somewhere.



I would wear it with this silk skirt from Garnet Hill. I would dye the skirt. Haven't decided whether it would be dark navy or a deep magenta kind of color. Reddish, but not the same red as on the T-shirt. Slightly mismatched reds. But no, I would feel conspicuous in a red skirt so should dye it navy. I prefer dark bottoms. Actually scratch buying this thing, especially at Garnet Hill prices (sorry GH) -- Vogue Fabrics has crinkle silk on sale for under $4/yard!!! Sew it! And if you really want to get independent good ol' USA folksy style, add some stitching and applique like Alabama Chanin (and yes I realize this post advocating all these new purchases is not upcycling, not local, not sustainable, sorry, this is only fantasy here).

Then finish it off with these Frye boots from Garnet Hill. These boots need a darker skirt to work. So maybe deep navy it is.

If it's chilly at night, throw on a jean jacket, like this expensive but super-cool distressed jean jacket from Sundance:

How much more All-American can you get than that?

How Ideas and Obsessions Get Started

So a blog that I regularly read, Gorgeous Things, posted about a blog named Counterfeit Chic, a name which intrigued me due to my penchant for knock-offs, thus I visited the blog with some, um, questions in mind. A little bit of surfing and clicking later, I come across a flickr post of the photo below:



... which as Counterfeit Chic elaborated, shows computer code instead of the (perhaps) fake logo it's supposed to show. These jeans were found in Chatuchak Market in Bangkok, Thailand, and having been there, I could completely believe these are fake. I mean, isn't the fantastic array of fakes a major draw to travel to Thailand? Just ask my "sitting man" that looks very much like an antique Sukothai Buddha unearthed during an archeological dig, along with the (not really) antique Burmese rain drum we bought at Chatuchak Market. If I can't afford to pay $10,000 at Golden Triangle in Chicago, why wouldn't I pay $400 at Chatuchak for the "new old" Burmese rain drum as a unique side table? I realize this is not a perfect comparison -- there are no LV logo or Burberry brand names on these pieces. But, consider this, how many "antiques" sold at real antique prices really are the true thing? How many travelers have had their wallets taken for a ride by men who just last week were rubbing dirt on their "antique" purchase? Beware, folks, and know what you're getting for your money. And perhaps we shouldn't be taking the real antiques halfway across the world anyway. I buy the replications with the full knowledge that that's what they are. It's not an investment, it's just something I want to live with and remind me of stories from Chatuchak Market and other places far away.

Now on to those "oops" jeans from Chatuchak ... what a great idea!!! Sewists (or sewers whatever you prefer) who are also blog nerds, why not put a piece of your blog's HTML code on a label? I have plenty of incorrect SAS code from grad school days to play with too. Computer chic!! Let the ideas run ...

Such a Rich World to Look At

There's been plenty of eye candy obsessions in the past week, just no time to post. Did much photography of: the Oshkosh EAA air show last weekend, two cats who are finally getting along enough to be in the same frame, my gardens. And fall catalogs are arriving in abundance. I love fall and winter clothes. So this is daydream season, dreaming of unlimited disposable income and no responsibilities. This outfit would be my first purchase and it's not unreasonable. But about the bag, although over-priced bags are all the rage right now, I'd rather invest than pay for what's carrying my wallet just to show it off to the world (but, if it goes on sale or eBay, all bets off). From Nordstrom, the Francesco Biasia handbag:

Carry it with this jacket from J. Jill:

The print catalog shows a neat collar detail that the model is blocking with her hand in online photo. This is the worst place in the whole photo to put her hand. I don't understand why they chose this photo. Anyway. I'm more "winter" coloring than "autumn" color, although maybe the neckline dips low enough, this might work without making my face look terminally ill. But I would probably wear this with a cream shell and an interesting necklace or looooooooong and looped skinny scarf made from this fabric:

Weekends and Fridays, I would wear it with jeans like these at Anthropologie:

Monday-Thursday trouser suggestion from Anthropologie:

I like the detailing that could work on weekends too, so it's not a conservative wool trouser appropriate only for work.

Despite the fact that I own plenty of shoes to wear with this, and really don't need to pine away for more, a look is incomplete without shoes. Thus some Zappos surfing results in various ideas for shoes:

This last shoe idea is really cute. Oh man, surf-shopping so dangerous.

Enough playing for today ... must go do laundry with the clothes I already own ...