I have a confession to make. I’ve finally come to terms with a truth that I’ve ignored for years: I am a hoarder. A clothes hoarder. I am that person who outgrows an item after a couple wears, stashes it deep in her closet, and thinks “ok well I’ll wear it eventually.”
Or I tell myself “I will like this again someday.” Sometimes I’m right, but 90% of the time I’m wrong. Trends come and go for me but at the core there are pieces that have outlasted 80% of my past wardrobe. Like say, my black Acne moto jacket (which is now more of a faded black) or my Saint James striped tops that I saved up to buy when I was still in college. Hell, even my white Converse sneakers from college are still around somehow. I’ll write a separate post about this later this week.
I think the thing that exasperated this situation was the fact that my closet isn’t attached to my room, in fact, it’s across the hall from my neighboring roommate’s room. A few years ago I built a really sturdy Ikea rack/shelving system in my room which holds my “main” wardrobe so I started using my closet to store stuff that wasn’t in my usual rotation. My outside closet is pretty big but up until recently it got so messy and crowded that it reached a point where I’d get really bad anxiety if I spent more than 30 seconds in there. I had no reason to really go in there, other than to stuff clothes in there when the rack in my room got too crowded.
It's taken me a while (years) but I finally caved and dedicated a couple weekends to a full closet clean out. Get this, I only cried TWICE! I was finding random clothes in boxes I didn't even know existed. I found clothes I only wore once or twice and got really upset with myself. In the end, I decided to only keep a 1/3 of it, which is a huge deal for someone like me who is the type of person to hold onto receipts for sentimental value. It's been a cathartic but rewarding experience so I wanted to document it with a blog series explaining my closet cleaning process plus next steps for maintaining my wardrobe.
I am also reviving Shop Blushing Ambition. Well, working on it. For now, I've been using Depop to slowly post a bunch of clothes to sell. I've been posting a lot of pieces from older blog posts, don't miss out!
