How to do it
Supposing you have read what I wrote in my previous article and you have decided you want to set up a capsule wardrobe, here is how I did it. The generic process suggested by those which I have read can be broken down into the following steps -
- Consider your personal style
- Conduct a clothing audit/edit/review
- Dispose of the stuff you are not going to keep
- Maintain your capsule wardrobe
The steps
Step one – consider your personal style
This was perhaps the quickest and easiest part of the process for me: I don’t have a ‘personal style’. If I were to call what passes as personal style for a mature gentleman such as myself it would perhaps be ‘shabby chic’ or more correctly, just ‘shabby’! I wear stuff. If we are going out somewhere and I want to confirm what I am wearing I will ask Linda. Perhaps the only thing I do is to avoid track pants when attending a more formal occasion, but that is pretty much it!
For you, you might want to look a bit more deeply and decide the sorts of clothes you like to wear and feel comfortable in, then decide how that will work for you in the larger context of a the complete capsule wardrobe. But don’t ask me, I have no idea!
Step two – edit/audit/review your current wardrobe
This one has a number of sub-steps –
- Work out approximate numbers in each of your clothing categories,
- Pull out your clothes and arrange in these categories,
- Review and edit (audit?) each category into keep and non-keep,
- Review your choices
Sub steps
Working out the numbers
This is a very personal thing and will depend on your lifestyle and ideas around clothing. Being a retired old gronk, most of my numbers were worked out around the days in the week and how long I was likely to wear a particular set of clothes. Generally we wash our clothes more often than we need to, but more detail on that is available here. I have seen a number of Capsule Wardrobe lists on the ‘net, everyone has their own version to suit themselves and this is mine. The categories and ideal number to go in each category are as follows –
Pull out and arrange
There are a couple of ways of doing this, one is to pull out absolutely everything, dump it on the bed (or some other place big enough to take it) and sort through it as a job lot all at once, or do it piecemeal, a draw, box or closet at a time over a number of days. I chose the former, Linda chose the latter.
So that is what I did! I went through all my drawers, stuff under the bed and my wardrobe, dividing them up into piles based on the categories in the above list. With the great mound of clothing now on the bed I could begin the process of editing my wardrobe.
Review and edit (audit?) each category into keep and non-keep
So this meant that I had to work my way through each pile and create three new piles, the piles being – Keep, donate, discard. More detail on the non-keep piles later.
Keeping notes on the number of pieces of clothing, I found out I had this many!
I sorted through each category, starting with the most numerous first, and then looked at each garment to decide which pile it would go on. I then ran straight into a problem I did not expect – I had an emotional attachment for some of my clothes! Some of my clothes I associated with a time, an event, a workplace, an activity or a person. Regardless of the fact that I had not looked at a particular piece of clothing in ten years, let alone worn it, I was loath to let it go!
In the end I had to ask myself (seriously) whether I would wear it or not, and if the answer was ‘no’ it had to go, regardless of my attachment to it! Of course there were other reasons for disposal, some were in too poor a condition, and most were not repairable, some looked OK but were so old that the fabric was so thin as to be almost see through, and others, I just didn’t wear any more. Some of the flannelette shirts were very old and nowhere near as warm as the newer ones I had bought. In the end I was able to whittle down my clothing piles to the point where I could discard almost 100 clothing pieces that were no longer needed.
The donate pile
Review Your Choices
This is the dangerous part! It is really easy to be checking through the pile of discards and back track on your disposals, returning them to the ‘keep’ pile. Stay strong! Remember why you put it in the discard pile in the first place. If you do really think it was a mistake, and there are valid reasons to keep it, return it to the ‘keep’ pile – but don’t get carried away!
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