What I’m doing about my clothes

After reading Overdressed, I decided to go through my own summer wardrobe. I don’t tend to own oodles of clothes, but I was still surprised to see how many clothes lurk in my dresser.

I really want to own only clothes that I use (because the right amount of stuff is the amount you can use!) and I knew there were some things in my drawer that I don’t regularly use.

So, I decided to employ a method I used when I was trying to figure out how much jewelry I should own. Basically, you put it all out in plain sight and then only put away what you wear.

This method works well for me because I can see everything I own. That way, if I don’t wear something, I know it’s because I don’t like it, not because I can’t see it!

I’m just tackling my short-sleeved shirts/tanks right now because I’ve already cleared out the cold weather shirts that I don’t wear.

To begin, I took them all out of the drawers, tried them all on, and separated them into a couple of piles.

This pile is stuff that’s in good shape but that I really don’t like or that doesn’t fit me properly. It’s headed to Goodwill.

These two piles here are shirts that aren’t wearable but that aren’t in good enough shape to be donated. The pile on the right mostly has holes (so, they’re going to be rags or bags or something!) and the pile on the left has yellowed armpit problems.

I haven’t known what to do about that in the past, but I did some googling and I’ve found that a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, washing soda, and water works pretty well.

I tried it on a couple of other shirts first, and now I’m out of hydrogen peroxide, so the rest are going to have to wait until I get to the store.

If the hydrogen peroxide trick doesn’t work (these stains are pretty set-in!), then those shirts will go into my rag pile too.

So, then I’m left with two smallish piles of things on top of my dresser. The original piles were a little bigger, but by the time I took a photo, I’d worn several shirts and put them into my drawer.

In addition to these shirts, I also own a few neutral-colored cropped summer sweaters. But I know I wear those regularly (I bring them with me when I go into stores/restaurants in the summer because the A/C is always so low in those places!), so I didn’t think they needed to live on top of my dresser.

In a few weeks, I’ll feel like it’s safe to assume that I’m not going to need the shirts that are still left on top of the dresser, and they’ll go into the Goodwill bag.

I’m really curious to see how many will be left, and I’ll keep you posted!