Credit: Sarah Crowley
Closets are home to one of the most personal things you own: your clothing. What you wear is an expression of yourself and if they don’t suit who you are, it can negatively impact how you feel about the way you look.
“Clothing is important because you use it every day,” shares Pia Thompson of Sweet Digs and today’s guest cure-ator. “Of all the things we own in our home, none of them will be used as often as our clothes.”
So today, you’re going to spend a little bit of quality time in your closet sorting through your clothes to identify what still makes you happy, and honestly, what absolutely doesn’t anymore.
Spend 20 minutes of quality time in your closet
With 20 minutes on the clock, you’re going to go through your closet. Get a timer and be sure to dedicate this time to decluttering and try to stick with what’s going on in your closet. You want to remove any distractions.
Here’s what Thompson recommends doing in those 20 minutes:
Categorize and put together like items.
Focus on one category at a time and do what you can in the allotted time. For instance, you can arrange by types of clothing — blazers with blazers, pants with pants — or by color. “That’s an easy way to get some organization out of a space that may be disorganized,” she says.
Review what feels good to you.
Look through your things and see what makes you smile. You probably have things in your space where the moment you see them, you instantly know that you’re going to look amazing in them, shares Thompson.
Identify the qualities you love.
Discover what qualities you like about these pieces. Is it the style, color, or fit? What do you gravitate toward? As you go through your closet, you’re going to want to replicate these qualities. Taking stock of the things you love about each subcategory of clothing will help you make decisions in your closet and when you’re out shopping in the future, says Thompson.
This process of focusing on joy and what feels good will naturally let other things fall away, she adds. If you don’t like something or it harbors bad feelings, such as guilt, it’s best to let it go. You don’t want to be wearing and carrying around those feelings, says Thompson. No matter how it ended up in your life or how much you spent on it, if you don’t like it, you’ll always feel bad wearing it (or never wear it at all).
THOMPSON’S PRO TIP: For those 20 minutes, do something that will pay you back immediately, such as the daily clothing you wear, then move on to other categories. If your closet is home to other items — such as shoes, bags, and miscellaneous — go through each big category one at a time. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew,” urges Thompson.