The Great Wardrobe Clear Out

After years of warnings, I’ve finally committed to clearing out my wardrobe. How much of it? The majority. I’m not even kidding. In the first cull, I took out around one-quarter of the wardrobe and then put it aside. That seemed to open the floodgates. Two more culls later and two-thirds of it was put aside, ready to go to new homes. I’m not sure if I’ll stop yet. There are still so many things I don’t wear.

This skirt just sold on my eBay! See more items here.

So how have I done it? It’s been a gradual process. Watching the film Minimalism helped. I would say I had around five hundred item in my wardrobe. Each time I say that to someone out loud, they are surprised. It’s like ‘wow, you have so many clothes.’ As though that’s unusual. Don’t you? Almost every person I know has no idea how many things are in their wardrobe. I only know because I catalogued the entire thing (I was studying to be a librarian at one point and also a historian so cataloguing has a beautiful sense of knowledge to me) using an awesome app called Stylebook. At first, I would log my clothes every day but then it became pointless. I ended up wearing basically the same things. Even if I did wear all the things I’m looking to clear out, I could wear something different every day for a year. That doesn’t seem like a recipe for attachment, does it?

This cardi went to a new home this weekend. This top and skirt going soon!

My mate Ange pointed this out to me as one of those eighty-twenty rules: we wear twenty percent of our wardrobe eighty percent of the time. Granted, she did say that to me after I had done the majority of my clear out, but I still found it to be true. I like to make sure I love every item I wear now. I wouldn’t part with the things I have because they are me. I love wearing them. I love everything about them. Everything else that I had that I didn’t wear because there was something ‘not quite’ about it. So all those things, I figured some other woman could love more than I so I should let them go.

This skirt just went to be loved by another lady.

I have around 6 boxes of clothes. Most are around a size 8 and the shoes are mostly a size 37 or 6.5. The first wave of 80 items has been listed on eBay and there are two more waves to come with another coming this weekend. The pictures here include items that have either just been listed or are going to be listed, so if you see something you like, click over to my eBay to take a peek! You can even watch me unbox the items that I’ve had in storage ready to sell in the video on my Facebook page here.