One (huge) thing I want to do before our move is edit my possessions down to a smaller quantity. This is a journey of 2,000 steps, at least. I'm starting with my clothes closet. Tonight, I tried on every short-sleeved shirt and sweater that I own and made a decision to keep or ditch. This seemed like a good place to start because the weather here is finally turning short-sleeve-worthy and I've sort of forgotten what shirts I have, like, fit, are not losing their color (damn you, blue t-shirts!), etc.
My final tally:
Keep 27 (63%)
Ditch 16 (37%)
I learned a few things from this process:
(1) I am not really a fan of most shades of pink. There is the occasional deep pink or salmon that's okay, but I don't like the other shades, especially near my face. And the difference between a pink that looks okay on me and one that makes my face look like that of a big ol' pink baby is astonishingly slight.
(2) Most woven shirts aren't nearly as comfortable as knit shirts. (Duh, news flash, right?) I ended up keeping only two woven shirts, including an ancient (circa 1997) brown, sort corduroy shirt that I bought for like $5 at K-Mart and that is kind of hard to wear (short-sleeved corduroy, you know) but that I just love. I will make this work!
(3) I really love the way olive green shirts match my eye color. It almost killed me to get rid of an olive green sweater but it was too short (remember when short tops was really the thing?).
(4) Sheer white shirts made for spring or summer are pointless. If you have to wear a camisole under it, it's probably going to be too warm (or just too uncomfortable) to wear. White woven shirts are the worst.
In addition to the crushing loss of the olive green sweater, I also got rid of every fuschia or red short-sleeved shirt I own, and I love those colors. While 27 short sleeves shirts is really overly adequate in number, I still want to find a good deep red knit shirt. I might find other needs once I get to my shorts/skirts collection.
I'm saving shoes for last because shoes are my favorite. I do not expect that I will do as well decluttering the shoes as some people, but I know that I can get rid of a few.
On this note, it's occurred to me that one advantage of moving from Texas/the South to Snow City is that I will have a great excuse to purchase boots. And the people around me are going to be wearing boots a lot, and infrequently wearing sandals...or the atrocious flip-flops that every person under the age of 40 wears in Austin, seemingly year-round. (If I had a dollar for every college kid wearing a coat with flip-flops in December.)
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5 comments:
This is a great thing to do before moving! Good luck!
My "automatic get-rid-of" clothes are the ones that don't look nice enough to be formal/fancy and aren't comfortable enough for casual occasions (or, at the next level, are too stained/horrible to wear outside, but not comfortable enough for pajamas/loungewear).
Oh, and you're right about knit vs. woven for shirts, but for pajama bottoms, I exclusively wear non-knit. They're so cool and nice (and not starchy/crispy like shirts).
Yeah, I like woven pajama bottoms, too - better than knit.
I remember the brown corduroy shirt from K-Mart. I can see why you want to keep it. It's a great shirt!
I too need to begin the purge for our own move... I'm pretty sure I have some clothes from when I was working the cube life (i.e. woven shirts and pants) that I can safely purge now that I've replaced those daily items with nice fitting dance pants. I also have a pajama collection to go through since I feel able to wear those way beyond the normal level of wear/tear deemed acceptable for street clothes. I recently got rid of a bunch of striped/patterned shirts, realizing that while I am attracted to them on the hanger I never end up wearing them and stick to solids.
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