Spring Must be Late: Wardobe Cleaning Edition

I’ve been working with due diligence for my Indie Pattern Month entry over on The Monthly Stitch. While I can’t tell you what’s going on with that due to contest rules, I can say that my digging for fabric send me into my refashioning stash. Oh, what a scary, scary proposition.

I had been meaning to sort through what I had for a while now; things that required a little mending or were inspiring, but looked not quite right on top, but who knows how many things from how many years ago are near the bottom. In short: I have way, waaay too many t-shirts.

I finished with that, thinking “Dude, I have way too many things just sitting about.” and a few things did go in a donation pile, a few others in the trash (mostly scraps and half-done refashions with weird things), but I’d say 90% went back.I did pull out some clothes for fabric and that I was glad about (but with the fabric stash too, I probably have enough designated fabric to make 8 garments). I went to bed mentally exhausted from trying to keep all of those fabrics, colors, and garment types in my head.

So naturally the next day I look over at my closet and say “Nope, I can’t deal with this mess any longer.”

I guess it’s officially time for spring cleaning.

So, after a truly remarkable marathon of trying things on, chucking them to the side, sorting them into piles and so on, I did manage to have my bed clear my the end of the day without too many headaches (though I did have to take a lot of breaks; too much sensory input).

Side A: Dresses and skirts, a weird hanging basket, and then pants and business wear (for that office job I totally have).

Side B: Coats, nice/love/swoon clothes, tank tops, nice shirts, then t-shirts and long sleeves.

Yeah, I kinda have ridiculous closet space.

Essentially, I have two closets going on a Black & Red wardrobe set and a Green-Cream-Brown set (You can see my thoughts on how colors impact my closet here) . I kinda thought it was weird, how varied the styles are, but then I remembered Candace also wants to dress as both a woodland fairy and a punk/goth. See, I’m not that weird.

I found some really interesting clothes though, some one-of-a-kind items that are just so one of a kind that, well, they never get worn. What I want to do is maybe some styling posts later, maybe encourage people to really extend their wardrobe. I dunno, but while I don’t like fast fashion, I also don’t like the rigorous mindset of a capsule wardrobe. Sure, things going together is really nice, but clothes help me figure out what energies I’m putting out for the day, and I couldn’t do that with only one of my two wardrobes.

Another thing I felt like doing was make lists of the things I had left, just for funsies. I did forget to count some things; I left out the business clothes, the sweaters and leggings in the hanging thing, the clothes in the wash, ya know, the usual stuff that goes by the wayside.

Total I had 118 garments in my closet:

• 61 were Black and Red.
• 57 were Green-Cream-White
• In Black and Red, my most plentiful category was Dresses and Tunics
• In Green-Cream-White, my most plentiful was tank tops.
• My most plentiful category overall was Dresses and Tunics.
• 7 items I had made myself
• 23 items I had altered in some way
• 32 items were bought in stores (including Burlington Coat Factory and things purchased at a festival)
• Of these, 19 are older than five years.
• 79 are thrifted.

It was rather illuminating, at least for me.

• I really wasn’t expecting my closet to be split in half so neatly like that, but that’s a great thing!
• I severely underestimated how much was originally bought in stores! I imagined maybe 10 or so, but I had failed to take into account all of my t-shirts and the little everyday things.
• I actually thrifted 67% of my wardrobe! When I saw how big the purchased at store number was growing, I did get kind of dismayed, but that’s still an impressive number!
• I have made more wearable things than I thought! Certainly not enough for Me Made May, but I’m still very proud of that accomplishment!
• I thought I had altered more of my wardrobe than I had. Right now, it is 20%, which I guess means either I had a million more knit dresses than I thought or I really truly the RTW.

I don’t know if this is interesting to anyone, but it is a good exercise if you do decide to clean your closet! I recommend Colette Pattern’s Wardrobe Architect if you’re wanting to look at looking at your wardrobe very critically.