Dress You Up

The amount of clothes I don’t wear amazes me.  Last year I did a major clean out and brought about 5 garbage bags full of clothes to Goodwill. Since then my closet has been at a much more manageable level. This past weekend I had a spurt of energy and decided to re-organize and clean my closet because it was getting messy. When I was finished I had a more unwearable clothes than wearable. The unwearables fall into three main categories:

House clothes I have a stack of t-shirts that are now obsolete since moving to Texas. Before I moved I lived with my sister and her three pugs for three years. If you’re unfamiliar with pugs, they shed A LOT. So much so that I ended up with two different wardrobes. One for around that house that would quickly get covered in dog hair and a second meant only for outside the house. Once dressed for going out, it was imperative that I didn’t sit down or even touch the furniture for fear of contamination. Many of my old house clothes are old or worn out or just plain ugly. Now that I’m living dog free, I just don’t have any use for these shirts especially since I barely wear shorts. Conclusion: They're next to go to charity

Hazy Shade of Winter I grew up in New England and have a wonderful fall and winter wardrobe. I now live in Dallas where its below 50 degrees for maybe 10% of the year. Hoodies and jackets are two of my favorite pieces of clothing however I had to institute a buying embargo because its never cold enough to wear what I have. Add to that flannel shirts, sweaters, and basically anything long sleeve and I’m ready for temps that never come.  One annoying part about these clothes is that I can’t completely get rid of them because it does get cold for about a month here and if I go home to visit Connecticut for Christmas I can’t show up in a tank top and capris. For the record, I have a total of 16 sweaters/jackets/hoodies taking up space in my closet. Conclusion: Begrudgingly save them for that one cold weekend.

Size Matters Having recently changed sizes, I now have a huge pile of clothes that simply don’t fit. These clothes make up the majority of what I don’t wear anymore. For example: shorts. I had built up a quality selection of shorts over the years. Whether they were loose and casual or tight and form fitting. I had them all. Now I can’t fit into a single pair. I found myself surprisingly annoyed that I had to start my shorts selection over from scratch. The new fancy work pants I bought for my new office job? Can’t wear those either. Then there are the jeans... I have both fat jeans and skinny jeans in a variety of washes and wears and now I can’t fit into any of them. Tops aren’t as bad of a story because my upper body didn’t change as drastically as my waist did. Granted I have a lot of t-shirts that don’t fit but that’s more of an aesthetic preference rather than a true size issue. Conclusion: Hang on to most of it for another year or two in case my weight swings back to where it was.

 All the folded clothes are my unwearables. The hanging shirts are what I actively wear.