Declutter your closet

Imagine the state your closet if you never clear it out. Would it be clean and tidy with the essential of your loved clothes? Surely no… If you don’t pay attention it would transform itself into a storeroom where the never worn clothes pile up. Sometimes, by seeing such mess, you will try to tidy it.

This is POINTLESS.

In both following situations you will feel frustration. On the one hand, you will possess as much clothes as at the beginning since you won’t be able to make that choice between two items, and on the other hand, you will regret some items since you got rid of them while you still wanted to wear them. Or the last option is that you still have this stack of clothes, after the sorting, that you keep since you don’t know what to do with them or too whom to give them…

Life can be seen in the same way: our daily life clutter up with secondary activities and commitments. For clothes, as far as they don’t have expiry date, they will indefinitely weigh up on us, except if you settle a clear and rigorous system.

HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ?

The first idea would be to EXAMINE.

Instead of asking ourselves if we will wear it one day, this is a false question, we can prefer wiser questions such as “Do I like it very much?”, “Do I feel good earing it?” and/or “Do I often wear it?”. If the answer is negative, get rid of it.

The second thing is to ELIMINATE.

The sorting has been done. You have two stacks: the first is the items you want to keep, the second is the one you want to get rid of. Let’s focus on this last one. Are you ready to definitely get rid of them? Studies have shown that we tend to give to our possessions a superior value to their actual value. That is why this is sometimes hard to let our them go. One key question would be: “If it wasn’t mine, how much would I value (price) this item?” It allows us to set the record straight…

The third and last thing is to EXECUTE.

Having a tidy wardrobe implies habits and a minimum sense of organization. You will need a big bag to put the items you want to get rid of, the place where you want to throw them away and/or the moment when you will go to this association, maybe. There are many wauys to find new spheres of sustainable consumption.

In fact, the sorting of your wardrobe can be something that is done on a daily basis so that you are not exceeded by the number of items on which you ask yourself if you will keep it or not. But a first step to go through this idea would be to stop buying clothes, or to reduce at least the number of items that you possess.

NEW THOUGHTS

The idea is not to get rid of everything or to stop completely buying stuff, but more to take consciousness about our consumption of the “fast fashion” items and of the mental load that it represents.

First, they will be special occasion for which you will need very special items: the wedding of your sister, your 2 years couple-anniversary with your boy (/girl) friend or that very important job interview that you don’t want to miss out.

Secondly, by consuming less, you will give less power to big companies that make money off of exploited (and young) work force which is important in terms of ethic, as well as reducing pollution emitted from the textile industry. There are ways to buy second hand items by buying from associations or shops such as thrift stores.

CONCLUSION

The major benefit from keeping a simple and not over-furnished wardrobe is TIME. It is more justified by the fact we daily hear about the lack of time that people suffer from… Each morning when you will get out of your bed, in front of your closet, you won't spend 10 minutes wondering which item you will pick today. By the way, there is another strategy to make things easier: the same outfit. If you want to wear the same outfit every day, get rid of all the other items and buy it 7 times. This might seem a bit strange at first but if this is an outfit in which you feel great, this is worth it.

Before buying a new item think twice, “do you really need it?” or “do you make a good deal?”, usually, when we deal with discounts we have to be careful as prices are not that transparent. This is easy for companies to make us think that we made the deal of the year, while the company just swindled us with a fake discount for a initial price that is in fact, much higher from what it really was.

- You will time

- You will save money

- You will save mental load

- You will save energy (people don’t give a fuck about what you wear anyway)

SOURCE

Essentialism : Greg Mckeown

---

Thanks for reading :)

Valentin