The Monsters in Your Closet

Your closet could be your biggest obstacle to creating functional and fabulous outfits every morning.

I don’t mean the structure and closet design, although that can help. What I mean is that your closet could be full visual junk: pants that don’t fit right now, blazers that are out of date, worn out cardigans, blouses that lost buttons or need dry cleaning.

These create visual confusion and ultimately frustration. Your mind is looking for something to wear but instead everything you see has an asterisks on it, a note* “perfect, except for…” If you have to remember an issue with half the items in your closet, your mind is doing a lot of unnecessary sorting.

I recently cleaned out a client's closet where 70% of the pants were not wearable today. And that’s the key: wearable today.  Every morning when my client was getting ready for work, she was looking at and mentally disregard 30 pairs of pants. That’s a lot of mental sorting at 6am!

There are the ones you keep because maybe you’ll lose those ten pounds and they’ll fit next year. Or maybe you’ll gain weight and the other slacks will fit again. You’ve got pants in your closet that are perfect for winter, but you can’t wear them for the next 4 months. These other pants need to be ironed and the ironing board is in the basement. And you’ll bring this other pair to the dry cleaners. And maybe in the same trip you’ll drop these other ones off for alterations… some day. All together, these defunct pants create visual and mental clutter that feels overwhelming. You can see 30 pairs of pants (so many!), but you really only have 5 that you can wear this morning.

We all shift a size up or down from time to time, so it’s okay to keep those other sizes, just keep them out of sight. Out of date clothes can get donated. Put your off-season pants in an off season bin. Create a special hook for clothes that need professional attention; don’t keep them in the general population where they will tempt you time after time. At the end of my client’s recent closet clean out, we had moved 30 pairs of pants out of her closet. That’s a lot of mental and physical space freed up! She only had a few pairs of pants wearable today; no wonder she felt uninspired.

If it seems like you have a ton of clothes but nothing to wear, a closet overwhelmed with outdated and ill-fitting items could be the culprit. It might be time for a closet clean out and reorganization. I can help you figure out what is wearable today, what needs to be stored, what needs to be donated, and what can be fixed. You will be truly inspired by what you have left. You do have gems in your closet! Lets find them and let them shine.

I am now offering 3 sessions for $400 (a total of 6 hours). The first session is focused on closet clean out: what doesn’t fit, what is truly out of date, and storing what is out of season. We’ll talk closet organization techniques and set ourselves up for the following sessions where we will fill in the wardrobe blanks and create new outfits. Email me at sarajoyvanboven@gmail.com to schedule your closet clean-out.

There are many types of monsters in your closet (none of them actual monsters) and I'll be posting more about them in the future. Check back soon!