What's in Your Closet?
Are you guilty of neglecting 80% of your wardrobe? I bet you are!
When you buy an article of clothing, how many times do you envision yourself wearing it in a year? If you just took a stab at a number, what would it be? Chances are, if you are like many Americans, the actual number of times you will wear that article of clothing is far fewer than you might think. Just try this exercise…how many shirts do you own? Now divide that into 365 days. Hmmm. Now think out a few years. How many years do you envision wearing this article of clothing…before it becomes hopelessly outdated? Or you are sick of it? Now multiply the first number by the second. Tah-dah! That is the approximate number of times you will wear that piece. Hmmm. Are you surprised?
Let’s examine now the fascinating concept that you probably wear only 20% of your clothes with any regularity, and the rest of the 80% hardly ever gets worn. So truthfully, that one piece either has a chance of getting worn much more often than the number we just created, or much much less often. Maybe even never! And you won’t know which number it will be until you actually get it home and start wearing it. Unless…you have a plan.
All those clothes in your closet that never get worn just shouldn’t be there…in fact they shouldn’t have entered your closet at all! They cause confusion. We like to think that lots of clothes give us lots of options. But this is actually not the truth. What really happens is that the clothes that don’t get worn cause a paradox of choice. With more options, it actually becomes HARDER to make a choice, rather than easier. Hence the well known phenomenon “I don’t have a thing to wear!” Limited options make choosing easier, and make one happier with ones’ choice.
But we THINK that we need those many options to make us happier. We are addicted to the comment “Oh, I love that <whatever>! Where’d you get it?” We want lots and lots of clothes so that other people may find us trendy, or well-dressed, or wealthy, or what have you. But how often have you worn something once--even had a compliment on it--and then never wore it again because it actually was a little too tight or a little too loose or the fabric rubbed you the wrong way?
So what is the solution? The solution is to determinedly pare down your wardrobe to only a handful of awesome, well-fitting clothes that get worn and loved and reflect to the world an image that is totally consistent with you as a person. It requires thought and reflection to initially put together your very small closet.