Declutter Diaries: Clothing

Hello everyone! Welcome back to BirthMay 2022! Today’s post is going to be my experience decluttering my closet.

In case you’re new, every May I blog every day and call it BirthMay! Why? Because it’s my birth month and I’m super extra.

My goal every BirthMay (and Blogmas) is to dedicate one day a week to a series that is meant for me to share my experiences and my knowledge on something in hopes that it helps someone else. For this BirthMay, I decided to dedicate Sundays to decluttering in this brand new series, Declutter Diaries! For the three middle Sundays in May, I’m going to share what I have learned about decluttering, my triumphs, my struggles, and thoughts overall.

I’ve mentioned multiple times on this blog how difficult it is to declutter clothing. I feel like it’s just so wasteful to throw out shirts or leggings with a tiny hole even though I know I won’t wear them because of the hole! Or if I donate it, I just feel like it’s wasteful because I’ve heard that donation sites get too much clothing to be able to properly sort it and sell it, so they’ll throw out a ton too. It’s hard to feel okay with just getting rid of things that could still be used.

Another layer that I always bring up is my mother. I love her but omg is she incredibly wasteful when it comes to clothing! She will constantly buy me stuff and if I try to decline she’ll just keep pushing it. After years of this, I just say thanks and take the item, but it’s still wasteful and then I have to figure out how to get rid of it. In the last few years I’ve managed to break her of this habit somewhat, but it still happens from time to time.

The most helpful thing for me has been to grab giant bags and stuff them with things that I either don’t want or don’t know if I want. Then I always say “okay, I’ll go through it again before I drop it off just to be sure”. But I never feel like looking through it again anyway so instead, I just shrug and give the bags to my mom so she can drop it off for me when she goes past the thrift store. It’s great! I avoid grabbing anything back out, and still get rid of the item. I rarely remember what has gone into the bags and if I do wonder about the item either I assume it’s somewhere in my closet or storage bins (for seasonal clothing) or that I already got rid of it so too bad it’s gone!

Going forward I want to either replace items with high quality stuff I’ll only have to replace every once in awhile, and try to make sure it’s neutral colored stuff so I can be more like those cool minimal capsule wardrobe people. I also had a ton of fun trying to narrow down my personal style for future purchases. While I’ll always need some business casual outfits for work travel (or at least tops for zoom meetings), I’ve narrowed down my style right now to be “glam archeologist”. Pinterest was a huge help for narrowing down my style and helping me understand what pieces I should focus on acquiring next. Hopefully that’ll help decrease the clothing I buy and what I bring into my closet going forward.

So that’s my own thoughts on decluttering my closet! Next week, I think I’ll focus on just general clutter and stuff. Please share your thoughts if you’ve decluttered anything recently, I’d love to hear it!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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Declutter Diaries: Clothing – A BirthMay Post