So here I am, surrounded by hundreds of items in a combination of clothes, shoes, accessories and jewellery. I never wanted to admit I had a problem, but it has taken me two years of my design and fashion marketing degree to realise that material things do not necessarily make you happy unless they have sentimental meaning. I am surrounded by my peers with families that had the money and could afford having a full walk in wardrobe which we all could have dreamed of. They associated happiness with what they owned and what they could afford. I didn’t have much growing up, and it’s just natural that as soon as you can have what you have never been able to have, you get it.
In my very first post on this blog, I outlined the contents of my wardrobe. I do have a problem which has gotten out of hand, and it may have grown since. You could say, I have become a professional hoarder. I began to associate material things with happiness, but it wasn’t making me happy in the long run. I live in clutter, and although my wardrobe has consistency with a minimalist feel in the colour scheme and relaxed silhouettes, it is far from minimal.
J and I live together in a one bedroom shoe box style unit, and he has the built in wardrobe for all his belongings – I however, have a clothing rail in the bedroom, four long slide out boxes under the bed, eight draws at the end of the bed, eight box shelves, and two clothing rails in the lounge room which hold my jackets and shoe storage. Is it fair that our unit is basically my wardrobe? Unquestionably not.
So here I am. It is a lovely Saturday. After watching the documentary ‘Minimalism – a Documentary About the Important Things’ on Netflix during the week, and although becoming a more sustainable person has been something I have been trying to acquire over the last couple of years, this was the ultimate wake up call to do a colossal declutter.
I am currently culling down my wardrobe. Although Courtney Carver’s 333 project would be my ultimate challenge to complete, it’s all about baby steps. My challenge is cull my down my wardrobe to fit on one rail to hang in the bedroom and open up the living space in the lounge room. The slide out containers under the bed will then contain the excessive contents of my wardrobe to be put into our above wardrobe storage where I can not access at all without a ladder. I had just had a clean out and donated clothing to one of my my younger sisters who now fits into most of my tighter fitting clothing, so I will not be donating anything I put away until I pull it out of the above wardrobe storage where it will stay ‘out of sight and out of mind’ until the end of summer.
And the end result… I’m now down to one clothing rail and my sets of draws. I’ve used the four big slide out boxes under the bed to store away clothing I may need next year or not 100% ready to part with to go up in the above wardrobe storage, and I have two garbage bags full (which I’ll reuse as bin liners afterwards) with clothing to upload to my depop to give them a second life (@lluhsd), a lot still with tags attached! I am so embarrassed relieved.
I discovered a lot of clothing that I remembered buying, wanted to wear in the last year, but couldn’t find. I am hoping this decluttering means I can enjoy this spring/summer with clothes I truly love, and not create many floor-drobes and have many tantrums around ‘I have nothing to wear’.
And although I have a long way to go, and I could still do a bit more refining to my wardrobe, I welcome myself to ‘the edited life’.
My goal is to adhere to the ‘one in, two out’ rule. Although my ultimate goal is to not purchase anything at all unless I absolutely need it, this will help justify whether I really want something and willing to sacrifice some of my favourite pieces in my wardrobe for it.
…and Tidus is also enjoying all the empty boxes, of course.