How I Downsized My Wardrobe / Clothing Collection

Having too many clothes can be really annoying

• Your drawers are overstuffed
• Your closet is too cramped
• There are extra piles of clothes around the room that have nowhere to go
• You look through a closet or drawer FULL of clothes but you can't find one thing that you like

I tried, over the years, to organize my clothing better, move it around, etc but nothing ever really worked. Then I found the book "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo and it turned out to be the inspiration I needed to do things right and make a change. 

I learned a few important lessons from the book and from applying its recommendations

• The solution isn't more space. It's matching the number of pieces of clothing that you keep to the space you have.
• Only keep the things that you really like. That you really REALLY like. 
• It's not necessary to go overboard with specific folding or sorting rules if you think they are a waste of time

Match the amount of clothing to the available space

To get started, look at your available space. In my case, I have about 6 feet of closet space to hang clothes and 5 dresser drawers.

I made a commitment to that I would only end up with a collection of clothing that would fit nicely into that amount of available space. Part of the solution and making the most of the space was rethinking at a high level. I had a lot of old dress shirts and pants hanging in the closet that I didn't like and never wore. I usually wear polo shirts every day. The polos were stuffed in my drawers with t-shirts and often got really wrinkled. I decided that 90% of the dress shirts and pants should go and that I would use the freed up closet space to hang my polo shirts.

I ended up with the high level plan. Closet - suit, jackets, hoodies, polo shirts, and a few dress shirts and dress pants. Five dresser drawers - 1. jeans and pants, 2. underwear and socks, 3, tshirts, 4. other shirts like thermal and long sleeved tees and pants, 5. sweatpants and shorts and swimsuits. 

Getting the clothes into the available space - keeping what you like the most

The best way to make that happen is to take everything out of the closet and dresser and then start putting items back. 

For each category, select the items that you like the most and put them in the space. 

What if I have too many of a certain item?

Ask yourself, do I really need 6 hoodie sweatshirts, or aren't the three that I wear all of the time really enough (and I don't need the one that's a strange color, the old faded one, or the one that's a little too tight).  

If that doesn't work, you can have more items in one category but you have to reduce the space for another category (like I reduced dress shirts to make space for the polo shirts that I prefer).

And if you still end up with more items in a category that you feel that you just can't part with, put the best in the final location and the second tier "must keep" items in a temporary storage garbage bag and keep them off to the side for 1 month. If you find yourself needing to wear one of the items in the garbage bag then take it out and wear it and ask yourself this... "I just looked through the 20 shirts that I decided not to wear. I pulled this one out of the garbage bag instead. If I didn't like any of these 20, there must be one or more of those 20 that I could put in the garbage bag in place of the one I took out". Then make that swap and put your least favorite in the bag. After a month, you will probably be able to easily throw out the garbage bag.

What if I don't like most of what I have? Do I still have to fill up the space?

No. There is no problem having extra space. If you go through your underwear and most of them are old or just ugly, then get rid of them and buy some new ones that you really like. When you make this change and see clearly what you have, you will be able to avoid buying item types that you already have enough of and you can spend your clothing budget on items that you really love and need.

What happens when I buy new items

Very important - First ask yourself, will this item be replacing a worse item that I already have? If you already love every shirt that you have and you have no more space for a new shirt then don't buy a new shirt. If you have one that is getting old or out of style then be ready to get rid of that old item when you bring the new item home. Don't go beyond what will comfortably fit in your available space. 

When you buy a new item, you will need to get rid of an existing item to make space for it. 

Don't keep extra empty hangers in the closet beyond what will comfortably fit. They will just tempt you to buy more clothes and over-stuff your closet again. Get rid of the extra clothes hangers.

Don't go overboard with the folding instructions that are in the book if they don't work for you

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up book has a lot of interesting suggestions on how to fold clothes. I tried all of the suggestions to start and ended up continuing to follow most of the suggestions but ditched a couple to save time.

• Sorting by color from dark to light looks nice but in the end seemed to be an unnecessary waste of time (trying to get everything in order)
• Pants - Folding in thirds, then in half makes them the perfect size to line up in my drawer
• Underwear - Was just too time consuming to fold them in the recommended way and try to get the different styles into a consistent size. I decided to just stack them and wear whatever is on the top of the stack. Maybe other people care more about selecting certain pairs every day and it might make sense to spend all the extra time folding in that situation.
• Socks - I follow the folding style because it looks cool in the drawer and only takes a couple seconds per pair. It's better than them being balled up or a big, mixed up pile of socks
• T-shirts - Folding following the instructions makes much easier to find a shirt compared to stacking them and messing up the stack and wrinkling them so I follow the folding instructions for those
• Shorts, sweatpants, swimsuits - The folding style makes it easy to fit all of these different items together in one drawer and easily see what's in there