How I Got Rid of 50% of My Clothes
5 ways halving my closet helped me declutter my room and life
My divorced parents set up the “classic” time-splitting schedule for my sister and me. It went as follows:
- Sunday night, Monday, and Tuesday at mom’s
- Wednesday and Thursday at dad’s
- Friday and Saturday alternating between the two parents
I quickly learned the best strategy to avoid textbooks at the wrong house, forgotten kneepads for volleyball practice, or (the most disastrous possibility) a left-behind outfit: haul as much as I can from one house to another.
The constant switching and ever-looming threat of forgetting have landed me, as a senior in college, with a not-so-healthy inability to let go.
My college apartment is filled with notebooks from my freshman year, random birthday cards dating back to high school, and several junk drawers swelling with every “but what if I might need this?”
Last week, I was fed up with my closet piled high and overflowing dresser drawers. So I told myself that half of it had to go.
I had three rules going into The Sorting:
- If I hadn’t worn it in over a year, it was gone
- If I wouldn’t buy it again right now, it was gone
- I could keep one purely sentimental item that didn’t fall into the above categories
Five trash bags of clothes later, my room is brighter and I can finally close my drawers without a wrestling match with my dresser. Here’s why it worked:
Giving myself a 50% goal meant I had to be brutally honest with myself
In prior closet cleanouts, I’d waffle over every “maybe.” This time, the 50% threshold meant any time I hesitated, the offending item was thrown de-facto into the donate pile.
Giving myself permission to be brutal made for easy choices.
It also made for a relatively quick process; by giving each item no more than a few seconds of consideration, the whole process took less than an hour.
I stopped holding onto clothes for vague sentimental reasons and only kept what held deep emotional value
The number of ratty high school t-shirts in my dresser would have sent any sane person into a laughing fit. These were the worst of the clothes I kept for sentimental reasons; I easily justified keeping them by thinking “well, I can sleep in these!”
In reality, none of the memories attached to those shirts were all that meaningful.
On the flip side, I rediscovered a sweater in The Sort attached to one of my most important memories (this was my Rule 3, purely sentimental item). I bought the sweater while visiting another university for a stock pitch competition that ended up being a formative experience I think about often. The downside? The sweater was Christmas-themed, so I haven’t worn it since.
Ultimately, I realized the emotional attachment I felt toward a sweater representing one of my favorite college experiences was ten times greater than what I felt for any random Science Olympiad t-shirt.
The sweater was worth keeping. Everything else wasn't.
With COVID, the answer to “what if I need this” is always “I won’t”
Switching between my mom's and my dad’s, I desperately tried not to forget anything important. The answer to “will I need this?” was always “I could— so I’ll bring it just in case.”
That mentality has shaped the river of clothes in my closet. Pre-COVID, it was easy to imagine a scenario where I “might need” everything I had.
- Blue wig? I might need this if I go to a wig-themed party.
- Knee-high socks? I might need this for a random Halloween costume.
- Going-out shirt I bought at Urban Outfitters freshman year? I might need this if all of my other going-out clothes are dirty.
With COVID, all of those “maybe” scenarios disappeared. And so did the corresponding clothes.
Folding and sorting the “keeps” meant I could compare items to their peers for the first time
An additional rule was that I folded and sorted my “keeps” into piles so that I could take stock of what I might need to cut down further.
A surprise bonus of this was that it allowed me to compare my “maybes” with favorites of a given clothing type. For example, I have ten-ish favorite sweaters that I wear on repeat during the winter.
Being able to compare that ill-fitting Forever 21 sweater from five years ago to a sturdy sweater I wear once a week really highlighted the difference in quality between my favorite items and the “maybes.”
I realized that I wear 10% of my clothes 90% of the time
At the end of The Sort, I realized that even among the half of the clothes I kept, I wore a minority of them almost every day. For example — I now have five pairs of jeans in my drawer (as opposed to maybe twelve before The Sort). However, of those five pairs, there is one pair alone that I wear two to three times per week. What’s even crazier is that this pair is from 2014.
As to the longevity of the jeans, I have American Eagle and the fact that I haven’t really grown since eighth grade to thank. But these jeans represent a broader pattern of occasionally splurging on a really nice piece of clothing and reaping tremendous benefits from it.
The same went for two pairs of Lululemon leggings I bought secondhand in 2019: they quickly replaced all of my other leggings, and I now wear them both once a week each. And I can make similar statements about my favorite shorts, sweaters, shirts, dresses, and shoes, too.
When things weren’t in that top 10%, I needed a very compelling reason to keep them.
All of this leads me to my final revelation:
Going forward, I won’t buy something unless I’m confident I’ll want to wear it at least once every single week.
This will probably mean buying higher quality (read: more expensive) clothes that I have a demonstrated need for. Which is awesome. I’m not in a hurry to re-clutter my closet anytime soon.
As a senior preparing to move to New York City after graduating, I know I’ll soon have even less space in my closet and dresser. The purpose of my clothes themselves will also change: I’ll need twice the dress-shirts and half the t-shirts.
In fact, I might have to even cut my clothes in half again. After this, I’m up for that challenge.