OK, you think I’m crazy with that title, but I want you to treat your wardrobe like you treat the kitchen and its contents. No I don’t want you to start cooking in it or storing the bread, but I want you to think about how you use a kitchen and what you keep in it.
1. What is it’s function in your house? The kitchen is a working space. You don’t use it as an archive for items you owned as a small child, or as storage for all those bits and bobs that you don’t know where to put. Your wardrobe should be the same. It’s a working space for you to get dressed every day, to put together your outfits, the way you put together a recipe. They are also not your fine china, only brought out for special occasions.
2. Everything should be accessible and easy to find. You don’t hide the flour, milk or bread in out of the way places, neither should you hide your jewelry in a box that’s hard to access. Make it easy to see and you will wear it! Your wardrobe is where you put together your outfits in your style “recipe”, it needs to function easily for you with everything you need easily at hand. If you’re searching through racks of clothes or scrabbling through overstuffed drawers trying to find a garment it’s time to get rid of what is not working for you, clear the clutter so you can create amazing outfits.
3. Fashions are like food, they have a used by date. Sure some have longer used-by-dates such as tinned foods, these are the more classic garments. Then there are the short term garments that are like milk that go off much more quickly – these are the fads. Then there are the trends which may be more like a packet of pasta, you can keep them for some time without them going off. There is no point in keeping food past its used-by-date, as you also shouldn’t keep dated clothes. If there is something you really want to keep for sentimental reasons then you need to find it a new home, not in your active wardrobe space.
Just as you clean out your pantry periodically for out-of-date food, you also need to clean out your wardrobe for items that are now off!
