Why Am I Here?
Well, the issue is that I have a problem, one that overcrowds both my closets and my garage. Specifically, I own a lot of clothes, shoes, and accessories, and I tend to throw them all into my closet. Consequently, my closet overflows, making it difficult to find anything. Faced with the daunting task of searching for something to wear, I often settle for yoga pants and a hoodie instead. Moreover, I frequently purchase items online and simply toss them into my closet, where they remain unseen. As a result, these items sit there for months or even years, unopened and unused.
Fashion Love
I’m also here because I love fashion—sparkly tweeds, fancy buttons, lace collars, patent leather purses, high heels, and everything in between. Fashion is my outlet, and it brings me joy to own these beautiful pieces, even if I’ve never worn them. Just knowing I have them makes me happy. However, I want to wear these items and create beautiful outfits with the clothes I already have, as well as the ones I’ll buy in the future.
Style Education
I’ve wanted to start a fashion blog for years to share my love for style with others. However, fashion is more than just buying an outfit you see in a magazine and posting pictures of yourself wearing it. There’s a lot to consider, like the cut of the item and how it suits your body type, fabric color and how it complements your skin tone, using patterns effectively, the right pant cuffs and shoe styles, accessories, and even choosing between a Parisian or bohemian look. These are the topics I want to explore through this blog—the science of style and the creativity behind it. I’m excited to share what I learn with you along the way.
Before I can start learning how to style outfits, I first need to focus on the clothes in my closet that actually fit me. To do this, I’ll need to clean out my closet.
How I Cleaned Out My Closet
Closet Cleanout Step One: Take Out What Doesn’t Fit
The first step is to remove all the clothes that don’t fit me. Right now, I wear a size 14/16 or XL, depending on the brand. However, my closet has sizes ranging from 4/XS to 16/XL. While I don’t want to get rid of the smaller sizes just yet—since I hope to fit into them as I lose weight—I will store away the clothes that don’t currently fit.
Alright, let’s get back to cleaning out my closet.
I sorted the clothes into piles by size: Size 4/XS, 6/S, 8/M (which is my largest pile), 10/L, and 12/L.
This helped me determine what size container I would need for each pile.
Closet Cleanout Step Two: Get Them Out.
I needed to store the clothes that didn’t fit me until I was ready to use them. For my largest pile, I used a 45-gallon storage tote, which I could barely close, to store most of the clothes that didn’t fit. The other piles all fit into a 30-gallon tote. After labeling them, I placed the totes in the spare bedroom closet, out of sight for now.
Closet Cleanout Step 3: Inventory
Now, I could focus solely on the items that fit my true size.
To make things easier, I researched apps that could help me catalog my closet. I wanted something simple where I could upload pictures of my clothes to see what I had available for outfit creation.
After reading a blog post that reviewed a few apps, I decided to try Indyx, mainly because it met my needs and was known to be less glitchy.
Indyx is a free app, but you can also become a member or pay for additional services, like “The Lookbook.” This service creates 10 outfits from your current wardrobe for $150, which isn’t bad. They also offer a free 8-week workshop that sends style refinement courses via email. The feature I like best is the ability to create outfits using the pictures I upload. There’s much more to the app, but these features really caught my attention.
After downloading the app, I tried on my clothes, took pictures, and cataloged them in Indyx. I also organized my closet into two sections: clothes in my size that fit me and clothes in my size that don’t fit.
Now that my clothing is organized, I still need to go through my shoes, jewelry, and bags.
Don’t worry this won’t take as long.
Closet Cleanout Step 4: Accessories
My shoes were spread across two different closets, but I managed to fit all of them, except my tennis shoes, into one space. I donated some, sold others, and threw away a few. A few of my shoes needed repairs, so I kept those and plan to either fix them myself or take them to a shoe repair shop for help.
All of my jewelry was crammed into drawers and boxes, rarely opened. As a result, many of my necklaces were tangled, and I spent a long time untangling them.
Here are the trays I bought on Amazon to help organize my necklaces.
I added my shoes, jewelry, and bags to the Indyx app, making it much easier to find what I need. Now that I can see everything in my closet on my phone, it’s so much more convenient to browse through pictures rather than sifting through 80 trays of necklaces or 50 different sweaters, for example.
So, what is my next step?
I want to keep organizing and beautifying my closet so that everything is easy to find and visually pleasing when I walk in. Additionally, I plan to start putting outfits together by using my many style books. I’ll choose one to follow and try creating a capsule wardrobe based on its recommendations. The best part of this step? The shopping!
Here is the final count of the clothes that fit and my accessories:
Jeans: 4
Pants: 8
Sweaters: 56 (I went back to recount this)
Shirts/Blouses: 18
Tees: 14
Tanks/Shells: 11
Camisoles: 15
Shoes: 121
Jackets: 3
Suit Jackets: 2
Coats: 3
Necklaces: 81
Bracelets: 46
Earrings: 32
Scarves: 8
Gloves: 1
Hats: 2
Bags: 14
Wallets: 5