The Great Closet Detox (& a Mini Room Tour!)

My boyfriend will tell you that I’m a hoarder. He’s probably right. And that doesn’t just apply to mementoes or childhood clothes, I will hoard anything that has sentimental value to me – primary school uniforms, broken childhood toys, letters from friends I’ve lost contact with – you name it, I probably kept it.

I also have a distinct aversion to throwing away things that are in perfectly good condition, especially impulse buys which have never been worn and will probably never be worn like, ever. The end result is a closet that is bursting at its seams, and nowhere to put the clothes that I do wear. Which in turn, affects the tidiness of my room as the clothes in current rotation end up on any available surface other than in the closet – my chair, my bed, and I hate to admit it but… the floor. It got so bad in December last year that I decided some drastic action was needed, so I called the most ruthless closet purger I knew… my boyfriend (AKA The Master Purger).

I don’t have many photos of my room before “Operation Closet Purge” began (truth be told I considered it but was way too embarrassed to even take any), but some of you may have seen the process in action over on my instagram.

http://instagram.com/p/xVXO8UgR7w/?modal=true

Using Into Mind’s brilliant Closet Detox Cheat Sheet, we went through every item of clothing in my closet and ended up reducing the total garment count by a whopping 75% (estimated). This means that for every 4 items of clothing in my closet, I only kept 1! Are you guys as shocked as I was? I had no idea my wardrobe was harbouring that many pieces that did not fit my style / were not a good fit / or were in an unwearable condition.

The end result was 2 garbage bags full of trash, another 2 garbage bags worth of wearable (albeit slightly out of fashion) garments bound for The Salvation Army, and a large suitcase full of clothes (mostly new and unworn) to be sold on Carousell or at flea markets. The Master Purger also made me promise that any unsold clothes left at the end of the year would be bundled up and shipped off to the good people at The Salvation Army so if you guys are the shopping sort, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE pop by my account on Carousell (@jessiehhm) and help me cover some of my shopping losses! Or if you’re not located locally, I’m open to shipping internationally so drop me a comment below and I’ll get back to you (I have yet to photograph and upload about 90% of the clothes to be sold, so do bear with me if my account looks a little bare at the moment.)

I also took the chance to reorganise my room and introduce some new furniture – a bedside table and a bookshelf (I don’t know how I survived without them before!) Other new organisational features which I love are this hanging jewellery organiser and these cubes from Ikea which are perfectly sized to hold my hair styling tools and tech equipment. Before this, they were just sprawled out across my floor, wires in a tangle and so on.

Instead of splurging on an polaroid-sized album (those things are expensive!) for the random instax photos I have lying around, I parked them behind the frosted glass of my wardrobe drawers instead. There you go – an instant design feature that conveniently hides my unsightly underwear and showcases all the people I hold near and dear.

Despite the emotional and psychological trauma of having my clothing collection drastically reduced in the space of 2 days, I must say that my room is a less claustrophobic, more relaxing place to be in now. It’s also helped to define my personal style which has made it a lot easier to choose my outfits and to see all my clothing at a glance. I would definitely recommend this closet detox process to anyone who feels that they have too many clothes, or to someone who constantly feels that they have nothing to wear despite having an extremely extensive clothing collection!

I’m loving this new change so much that one of my plans for the next year is to learn more about starting a capsule wardrobe in order to create a streamlined closet of good quality pieces that I love that are in constant rotation!

Do you guys have recommendations for reading materials on capsule wardrobes and personal style? If so, leave a comment – I’d love to hear them!