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HGF Project - Selecting the 3-Month Wardrobe
Wed, 10/13/2010 - 13:32 — megan
As you may already have read, I'm doing a fashion project called HomeGrown Fashion Project that consists of me drastically narrowing down my wardrobe from over 150 clothing items in my closet alone, plus two overflowing dressers and a large amount of shoes down to a sparse 33 clothing and shoe items for the course of 3 months.
I've had a mixed reaction, both within myself and with the people I've talked to about this project, but in the long run, I'm starting to appreciate the slim choices, and I'm making smarter decisions with the items that I do wear. I'm looking at my wardrobe with the "disposable" aspect taken away. I'm giving my clothing the respect that it deserves. So far, so good.
However, I didn't always feel so good about it! As I mentioned in the first article, I made a snap decision to create this project after being heavily inspired by Project 333, Wardrobe Refashion, and #StashBustArmy on Twitter. As I jumped in head first, I also dealt with a few of my biggest hoarder-like attachment issues: clothing and shoes were accumulating, and I was developing emotional attachments to old, worn out, and often stained clothing. I'm a hairstylist by day, so most of these stains were by way of hair color splatters down the front of my clothing or lines of color from leaning against a shampoo bowl or the like. Having tons of clothing to choose from meant I could be careless with my clothing and still always have something to wear. Not a good practice, and I was growing weary of ruining my favorite pieces but still feeling some need to hold onto them. Yuck. Why would I want to stare at my ruined clothing longingly anyway? I kept saying to myself, "Megan, it's JUST STUFF. LET it GO!"
So now, I've decided I've got to let the skeletons out of my closet! (That pun especially pleases me right now since it's nearing Halloween. *snicker*) I'm going to show you my process. The whole, messy, overwhelming process I went through. Ready?
Ok, let's get right into the worst of it. This is my closet before, from the top left side. You can see I've got accessories and baskets of stuff crammed onto the top shelf, as well as old nail polish and makeup in the far left bins.
The clothing is so jammed in there that my nighties are all shoved to the wall on the left. I can't even tell what I have in here when it's packed this tightly, and moving the hangers around to get between layers often knocks clothing to the floor. If I don't notice, that clothing ends up covered in cat hair if the cats get the closet door open. Not charming.
The worst of it is that I have entirely too many options in here! I could stand in front of my closet for 20 minutes going back and forth on what I was going to wear. What a waste of time!
Here's the other side, where I have yet more shirts and skirts jammed together and into the wall. Notice how my closet rod is bowed? Yeah, there's a good amount of weight on that thing.
Up top are my cat carriers, because until around the same time as my sudden decision to clean my clothes closets I was also very cluttered in my hall and office closets. I'm thankful that one of our friends offered to share his storage unit for the time being, which allowed us to move our Christmas tree and decorations, my trade show table, and some other storage items out of our closets and free up space for more commonly used items, like these carriers. They're now stored neatly in the office closet top shelf.
Here's where I get a little embarrassed to show you my mess. You see that white set of shelves back there? Shoe storage. Where are the shoes? Piled in front of it, and overflowing out of the door of the closet to the point where I have to kick them back in to close the door. I've ruined more than one pair of shoes this way. What a dumb way to ruin them! Ugh.
When I was beginning to process the emotions I was feeling at this point, I had to take a break to sit down and relax. I hadn't even started going through stuff and I was giving myself a panic attack. "It's just stuff, Megan," I reminded myself again. I wasn't even into the half of my stress feelings yet, but I didn't know that then! I didn't realize at first how difficult this would be for me until I really got into it.
Hah, look! There is one pair of shoes in the shoe organizer! You know why they're there? Those were the MOST UNCOMFORTABLE SHOES I OWNED. The worst!
So this side is more of the same, plus a random catch-all basket that I'd occasionally find the cats sleeping in, as well as a yoga mat that I didn't ever even open and I'm not even sure how I acquired, and my green baker's rack that I love but didn't have a good place to use. Shame, shame, shame. Ok, moving on.
Bathroom shelves. The necklace basket on top of the cases is overflowing, and stuff often falls to the floor when it's to this condition. Also, this tempts the cats to steal my things.
Bottom shelf is overflowing with makeup and hair tools, which used to fit nicely into the blue basket until I started dumping random things into it as a catch-all. Travel bag is becoming a more permanent fixture each day, and the little lace makeup case next to it sits mostly empty, with makeup stacked on top instead of tucked neatly inside. Charming, Megan, charming.
All the dresser drawers are crammed full and hard to find anything in without ripping the whole drawer apart. I've got 4 full sized drawers in this dresser, and one full sized in the small dresser that are jam-packed and disorganized.
All my nice little underthings! Stuffed into drawers and given no respect! Honestly, I forget I even have these cami and shorts sets and neglect them entirely for months at a time. What a shame. And occasionally, I snag some lace and ruin an entire piece because of my sloppy delicates care. I've got these two drawers and the two small drawers in my other dresser crammed full of undies, socks, bras, lingerie, stockings, bathing suits, and cover ups. Too much stuff, and everything's hard to find.
This picture also makes me a little sad, a little ashamed. I make all these nice accessory pieces and knitwear, and I collect nice scarves and belts, and what do I do with them? Shove them all in a drawer like I don't care about them at all. My grandmother taught me better than this!
I have a huge respect for handmade items until it comes to my own, which is the most backward way I can think about my own handmade goods! It's like love: nobody will ever be able to love you until you love yourself first! I need to set the example of respect for my own items before I can trust myself to properly care for other nice pieces.
Here's another thing that makes me feel bad about my messy habits: My neat, relatively simplistic husband has had to give up his clean, sane personal spaces to accommodate my need for more room to shove stuff. His closet not only housed his clothing, but our towels and linens. Is that fair?
He didn't even have room for his shoes without setting them on our winter comforters. I was beginning to feel like a serious jerk by this time in the day.
Mark decided to play along, by the way, but what you see here is the majority of what he started with in the first place. He also has a tall dark dresser like mine, but none of his clothing was stuffed into the drawers like mine was.
Now that I had made myself feel sick about my accumulation problems, I decided the best way to handle it was to just DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! I started by emptying my closet and dressers completely. Here's the whole story, right in front of you. To put it into perspective, there's a California-king bed about 2 feet down into that pile, and that's my entire wardrobe on the bed. Most of the bed is in the photo.
I began to sort the clothing into two piles. This pile, though still pretty large, is my keep pile. I've still got to choose my clothing items from the project from this pile and put the rest into storage, but these are the items I'm not yet willing to part with. My hope is in January when I go to get these from storage, I'll be able to part with even more of them since I haven't had them around for a while.
This pile is the donate pile. I gave away 2/3 of my original wardrobe and Mark gave away the rest of what he didn't put into his 33-item wardrobe. That's right, he didn't put anything into storage. He picked out 4 pairs of shoes, 27 clothing items, and still has the ability to buy 2 more clothing items for himself to finish out his 33. He had a MUCH easier time with this than I did.
On a side note, all this filled up an entire bin at Savers to the point where it was overflowing. And yes, I gave away the yoga mat set. I've got two other mats in my office. Let it go, Megan, let it go.
Here's all the hangers we gave away too. I got rid of all the random colored hangers and just kept the white ones. The extra white hangers I put into my office closet, still on zip ties, so I'm not tempted to use them.
Cheddar says hi again, by the way. He's helping.
The next day, we got up nice and early and got back to the project. We went to Target and I bought Space Bags and these storage bins. I washed the last of my laundry, folded everything neatly into the bags, vacuumed out the air, and stuffed all my other clothing items into these bins. I also put all my extra manufactured, store-bought jewelry and extra shoes into the bins, and promptly took them down to my friend's storage unit, to await me until January.
Here we go. All my nice-ies are folded neatly. My lingerie and bathing suits needed a drawer to themselves so they could spread out and not get snagged. Plus now I can find everything easily, and I actually enjoy looking through this drawer.
I also had enough scarves, hats, and belts to give them each their own drawers. You can see my knits rolled up, my handkerchiefs folded in the top left corner, and my silk and satin scarves at the bottom right. I can find them all and I'm not concerned any stitches will be pulled.
Here's all my belts, organized and untangled. I have room for my big waist-cincher belts to be laid out and for my chain and leather belts to be rolled up. I also have all my lint-rollers in one place now. I am happy when things like that actually have a home, and it's nice that their home isn't in a lint-filled drawer anymore.
Here's what I kept of my pajamas, wraps, lounge and workout pants. I got rid of a good majority of what I had here too, since I was already at it. I kept the nicest few of my favorites and a few of the most comfortable of the rest. I was glad that this challenge lets you keep your house clothing, exercise wear, and pajamas on hand as long as you don't wear them out of the house, because when I come home from work covered in hair, I still want to change my clothes for the night, whether or not I'm going anywhere. I also have just started acquiring clothing for hiking and working out that I've been using quite a bit lately, and I want to be able to have access to them.
Here's my workout clothes and jackets, which I'm thankful to be able to keep since hiking in different elevation of the SF Bay Area can be a big temperature change within the same hike. I also have clothing for hanging out in the evenings, and tank tops for working out or lounging in. I got rid of lots of old tanks in this department! This drawer was overflowing with just tank tops before, and the jackets and t shirts were taking over the closet. I kept just a few of each so I can layer during weekend hiking trips and still have clothes to change into after the hike, but I let go of all but my favorites.
I'm going to be honest here. Cutesy logo t shirts and tanks are my downfall. I have a problem for 3 reasons: you can get them for low costs, they're prevalent in fashion, and I develop an attachment to them from wearing them during parts of my life I particularly enjoyed. That means that even when my shirts look ratty or have stains, I have a hard time letting that shirt go because I have memories of it in situations I was in. My husband also likes his logo t shirts, and will wear them even past when I will! He's prone to wearing them with belt holes on the bottom, or when a logo is starting to wear out, or the shirt itself is faded to a different color entirely. He also tends to receive free shirts semi-regularly because he's in the tech industry, and tech guys love free tech shirts. Ask your nerdy friend what the last free t shirt he received was, and it will likely be from a software or technology company.
My free shirt dilemma is from working for Matrix. I get t shirts a lot from events or trainings, and I usually think they're adorable! Then I wear them to death, and I still can't manage to let go. Especially if it has a date or a slogan on it. It's like I think I'm going to forget the memories if I don't have the stuff, which I know for a FACT is not true. "It's just stuff," I was reminding myself again. "Let it go."
I was able to slim down my ribbed tank collection too, and now everything fits nicely in the drawer, there's no stains or paint, and I've got plenty of room.
Here's the bathroom rack that was overflowing and causing a hazard before. I am happy to say that over a week and a half later it still looks this nice, too! Plus our tooth brushes aren't likely to be knocked on the ground (EWWW) by the cats being prodding like they were before. I feel cleaner in a clean bathroom.
I also took the opportunity a few weeks before to empty most of my half-used old beauty products from my cabinet, which is another sore point of accumulation for me. I love having so many options, but I collect a lot of products that I only partially use because I work for a company that makes them, and there's often something new out. I'm making an effort to limit my choices and use up a product before I open a new one, no matter how much I want to try it!
Now I have no expired vitamins, no overflowing cabinets, and I can find what I want without digging around.
Here's the 3 jewelry pieces that aren't handmade that I decided to keep. I love the big chunky bracelets, and though the earrings are my second choice (I couldn't find one of the pair of my first choice, meh) I love them with an outfit for teaching. I wore them all a lot before the wardrobe diet, so I figured they'd be a good choice.
All the rest of the overflowing pile of jewelry, including an entire case below the pile, went into the storage unit with my clothing.
Tadaa, it's the big reveal! Here's my 33 wardrobe items, plus my 3 exempt suit pieces (exempt under "work only items") that I wear for teaching and working Matrix events, but nothing else. I'm really thankful that I have these, too, because I was invited to New York City for an event at the end of November, and my wardrobe would otherwise not be suitable. I do need to use my Fashion Police Pass earlier than I had hoped though, because I have to buy myself a coat. I also plan to swap a few of my casual tank tops out with long-sleeved shirts over the course of the next month, too, and my brand new sewing machine has just arrived to help me do so.
I'll do a thorough breakdown on each piece in the next article. :)
Now that I've been living in my 33-items for a week and a half, I really have begun to adjust. Like I mentioned before, I had an emotional time letting go of some of my clothing. When we donated the overflowing bin of bags of clothing, i actually started crying without realizing it on the way home. I knew it wasn't rational, but my eyes didn't care. But within 3 days, I started to feel better.
I feel a kind of liberation. My house isn't a mess. I don't have 2 full bins of laundry. Heck, it's 2 loads of laundry for both of us now, as opposed to waiting until I've got 5 or 6 to do and still having enough clothing to barely notice. My shoes are in better condition. I'm being better about protecting my clothing at work. I'm also starting to notice where I can make better choices in my future wardrobe purchases. So far, I'm pleased. I'll let you know how it goes as time continues.
