Emptying My Closet

I enjoy getting rid of stuff. Angel actually complained about this in a Facebook status of his from a few months ago: "Rachel is throwing away lots of stuff and calling me a hoarder for keeping papers from college." {further info: the papers were flyers for college events from 2005}

For the most part, I'm fairly good at keeping us from accumulating unnecessary stuff, but when it comes to my wardrobe, I tend to be so emotionally attached to my clothes that getting rid of them is a little difficult.

Example: I considered getting rid of a plain, old purple t-shirt that's I got for $5 from Kohl's. It's getting faded and stretched out, but my heart rebelled. "Angel proposed to you while you were wearing this shirt!" my heart said. I kept the shirt.

I'm planning on doing some serious shopping pretty soon, so in order to facilitate my shopping trip, it was important to get rid of clothes. My standards for getting rid of clothes this go-round?

1) The item doesn't fit well

2) The item has holes in it that shouldn't be there.

3) The item is ugly/boring and purely practical, and therefore isn't fun to wear.

My style has changed in the last few years. If possible, I've gotten a little more ornery and stubborn, and I don't want to wear clothes just because they are practical. I want to enjoy all of my clothes, which means that I need to get rid of the unenjoyable clothes. (Except my work clothes. They are unenjoyable, but I have to keep them.)

I thought I'd tell you a few of the stories of these items and why I decided to get rid of them.

 Obviously, these are my paint jeans. They've been my paint jeans since 2008. So they're supposed to look like this. But the holes in the butt (not pictured) are becoming quite unacceptable. Paint jeans that you can only wear on solo painting projects because they are too indecent for any group work projects are kind of useless, so these must go.

 The flip flops were free, and I have no use for platform flip flops. I love my starry sneakers and my brown bow sandals to death, but they are both quite literally falling apart. The black boots and the black and white pumps are both excruciatingly painful to wear. The strappy white heels and the strappy black heels are from the era when I thought you had to have a classic pair of strappy heels in basic colors to wear with dresses. Since that era, I've decided that fashion rules don't exist and also that I don't like strappy open-toed heels. They look too normal and I always feel like my toes are sliding out.

 Actually, I love this shirt, but it fits me horribly. I want it to go to someone with a shorter torso and much shorter arms who will love it as much as I do.

 I love the concept of this dress, but it's not at all right for my body shape. It's extremely loose in the top, and I've decided that it's not worth hoping that the top will ever shrink enough to not gape open.

This shirt is just plain ugly. I'm ashamed to say that I think I actually bought it myself. I don't know what I was thinking, I was young and foolish. If anything, it looks worse on me than it does on the hanger. Goodbye and good riddance, ugly shirt.

Don't worry, I'm not trying to sell you anything. I have a system for getting rid of clothes. I throw away the stuff that's falling apart, and I give the rest to my sister. She keeps what she wants and gives the leftovers to her friends or Salvation Army. Lizzy has a very different taste in clothes than I do, so sometimes when I've decided that something is intolerably ugly, that means she'll like it. It's a very effective system.

The time I spent sorting was productive. I got rid of: 7 pairs of shoes, 17 tops, 3 dresses, 2 pairs of jeans, and 4 skirts. Most of which I've had since before I got married (my style has changed somewhat post-marriage, strangely), some I've had for 6 or 7 years, and a good percentage of which were hand-me-downs that I kept because they were free, but I never really loved them in the first place.

Now I have lots of space in my closet!

Also, Lizzy, you can officially consider this your bribe to come visit me and get your free clothes ASAP.

Does anyone else have any organization projects they are working on? (Or you need to accomplish but you're procrastinating?) Is it also hard for you to get rid of clothes that you love but that simply don't fit you?