Closet Makeover Part 2: The Reaping

I thought I had been through all of my clothes last year, but actually I got pretty tired before I got to the back of the closet, and there was a bunch of stuff I just hung onto for no particular reason. Plus, there was stuff in the guest room closet I had totally forgotten about.  Now, I've been quite rigorous on the hanging clothes for my spanking new closet.

My hanging clothes are for work and the rare festive event. (My play clothes are folded in drawers.) What I wear to work each day is tailored pants, a knit top, and a blazer or sweater. Sometimes a men's style shirt. I wear a necklace every day or (rarely) a scarf, and a lapel pin on the blazer. I swore off heels more than a decade ago, though I left a pair of pumps in my desk in case I ever got to meet the president. Then I did actually meet the president, and I didn't wear the pumps, so that is that for heels forever for me. In summer, women in DC do not wear hose, and this summer especially I wore dresses with bare legs fairly often, with sandals when my toes are painted and ballets when not.  Now I have a pair of boots so I can continue to wear the longer dresses without needing hose. I do, however, wear "shapewear" under my dress.

I find I make the same fashion mistakes over and over.  I have bought not one, not two, no, even more, FIVE long cardigan sweater/jackets. The ones that hang down to mid-thigh.  It turns out, they make me look like a huge knit pear, totally accentuating my hips and rear end.  So I wear the sweater once, am uncomfortable whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I put it in the back of the closet, and forget I have it. They look so good in the catalogs!  But I think I've finally learned my lesson. I've put all of them in the box to give away.

When I find something I like at a nice price, I go to town on it. I've got a dozen silk knit tops from Jones NY, mostly in shades of taupe, grey and black. They come back from the dry cleaner on hangers, but I'm going to put them folded on a shelf or in a drawer, now, I think. The better to see them each day. I am out of the dry cleaner habit, and I've also got an extensive collection of cotton tees. But frankly, the cotton ones are old, they really ought to be ironed but I don't iron them, so I think I may try to wear the silk ones more often, as an alternative to buying a bunch of new cotton ones, which would still need ironing. When I get to organizing the drawers I should just dispose of the older tees.  (I did get rid of a bunch of them in last year's purge, but that was a while ago now and they are looking more worn all the time.)

I used to wear a cotton men's style shirt most days. I had them laundered (light starch, hangers) and liked the way they looked. Now, going through them, they seem huge. Not that I've gotten smaller, but current styles are more form fitting. I think most of my clothes are timeless classics, and yet there is that indefinable air of the width of the collar, the shaping of darts, that make things out of date. I've kept a couple of the old, big, shirts to wear as over-shirts for more casual events - no starch, but ironed. My new shirts are more slim-fitting, and are truly wrinkle-free from the dryer (as long as I hang them while still warm).

Blazers and pants get into winter and summer issues. When I assembled my trousers, I had twenty pair of wool slacks! Some of them are a decade or more old - from previous times I've been near this weight. After trying them all on, it was only down to 15 pair. With the couple of pounds I've added back, some that I thought would be big are somewhat more comfortable than a couple of pair that are very slightly too tight. I'm keeping the small ones, but I put them in the back. It's still more pants than I need, but I can't quite make myself get rid of any more, at least not yet. When I sorted by color, I have a bunch of very dark navy (I had to take them outside to natural light to be sure and I wrote on their labels with a laundry marker), a bunch of grey and tweed, but no pair of actual black pants (the only black ones I have are polyester summer weight). The problem is I have six good quality blazers that work with black, and only one of them will work with navy (all but one will work with grey). I've also got some browns in the pants, and couple of blazers that work with them, one a tweedy brown and one sage green. I've got several fancy sweaters with sage green in them that also work with the earth toned pants.

I don't wear skirts, but I have more than half dozen of them, from probably a decade ago. They are all fairly similar -lots of navy, mostly rayon - and they would work well in the summer. But how many skirts looking very similar do I need? Not that many.  Especially not when I wore none last summer.

So basically, I own too many clothes but not all the right ones. How could I possibly buy another pair of wool trousers, just so I have a black pair? How can I go buy a blue-toned blazer when I've got more than enough jackets in the closet already?  Now that I've got all this stuff assembled, sorted, and out where I can see it, I think I should work with it for a while before making any more moves. No buying (yay, my wallet) and no more getting rid of something that fits, not until I've tried wearing it first.

Plus, I might lose those 15 pounds and need all new pants! (It could happen.)