Living with Less: Why I Got Rid of Half My Clothes

It's been about two months since I considerably downsized my closet, taking huge armfuls of sweaters, tops, purses and shoes, and shoving them into garbage bags destined for secondhand shops. And even though I still ask, What to wear? each morning, I've found that the answers to that question are much more satisfying now.

I realized I haven't really said much regarding this wardrobe overhaul of mine, so I figured it was time for some details and updates.

What prompted this wardrobe overhaul? Well, we were in the midst of our apartment move—packing up all our belongings and moving within a 2-day time frame from when we found our new place—when I was overwhelmed by all of the stuff we had. Much of it was kitchenware and food, furniture and books, things that took up space but served useful purposes.

But then I came to my closet and I just couldn't bear the thought of moving all of those clothes on top of everything else. It just seemed excessive to me. Add to that the fact that the closet in our new apartment was significantly smaller than what I'd enjoyed in the old apartment? (See a little sneak peek at the new closet.) It's then that push came to shove.

In a moment of fortunate haste, I decided to divvy up the clothes, separating the ones that I love from the ones that go unworn month after month or that I only wear because I feel like I need to get some use out of them. 

I've cleaned out my closet dozens of times before, but this was the first time I'd ever been so ambitious and decisive while weeding out my wardrobe. "Like" no longer cut it. Now, they had to overcome the threshold of "Love." As I stuffed garbage bags full, I noticed that the "Love" pile was significantly smaller than the "Goodbye" pile.  This should be interesting, I thought.

I still held on to the "goodbye" pile for another month after we moved (mostly because I was so busy unpacking that I didn't feel like going out of my way to donate them, but also because, you know, just in case). And I found that I didn't have any use for the castoff clothes after all. Even though they were sitting right there the whole time, I found that I didn't miss them and never went rummaging back through them to rescue anything.

I was content wearing only my favorites and having less hangers to flit through to find them. It was something of a relief.

That's when I got rid of the clothes for good.

And you know what? I can honestly say that I haven't regretted the decision to downsize one bit.

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