As I mentioned last month, I have decided to try a capsule wardrobe for winter. (For more info on what a capsule wardrobe click here.) Basically though, a capsule wardrobe is just getting rid of all the crap in your closet you don’t wear and leaving the pieces you wear all the time. Most of us probably wear a capsule wardrobe without realizing it, because all our favorite pieces are mixed in with all the ones that we keep meaning to wear but never do. Case in point: this dress has hung in my closet for almost three years now. Guess how many times I’ve worn it.

Who guessed zero, because YOU get a cookie! There are dozens of pieces just like this dress taking up valuable closet space. Some pieces are vintage that I just had to have at the time but have never found an occasion to wear. Some are pieces from college days that I will never wear again. (I’m 29 years old, married, and live in a small town. I don’t need the same kinds of clothes I did back in college.) Some I have no idea why I bought in the first place!

So before I could begin putting together my capsule wardrobe, I decided to do a giant purge of my closet. I laid out every item of clothing I own on my bed. Ok, let me be more specific. In this first round I did not include ALL the old t-shirts I own (they would have taken over. I have way too many t-shirts from high school and college still lurking about. I need to keep the ones I really like to make a quilt of and get rid of the rest. But that’s another project for another time) nor did I include the exceptions to my number (workout gear/underthings/etc). My first round of purging was just those items that were being considered for capsule wardrobing.

Here’s what I had:

Yeah, that’s a lot of clothes. Do I need all of them? Absolutely not! So I started sorting. I started with three piles. LOVE. HATE. MAYBE. The hate pile was set to the side to either be sold or donated. I started with the Love pile. These were items that I loved and wouldn’t get rid of. I sorted these into three piles of their own. Capsule Wardrobe Ready which means that some will be in my winter capsule wardrobe, but the spring/summery pieces will go into storage until April. Too Big but Love pile will all go into storage until they are needed (I’m a realist). Too Small but Love will unfortunately also be given away or sold. Again, I’m 29 years old and haven’t had kids yet, so I’m probably the smallest I’m gonna be.

Once I took care of those sub-piles I moved onto Maybe. I took a good hard look at each piece and resorted them into Love, Hate, and Maybe again. Then I did the same process all over again. I had a few more Loves to store and to get rid of with the Hates, and then I had to go back to the Maybe pile. It was time to be ruthless.

It took a couple hours, but I finally had all the pieces sorted. I had bags of clothes to get rid of, boxes to put in storage, and the pile of Loves ready to be placed into my capsule wardrobe.

I gave myself a little break after getting my closet sorted out, and then I did go back and attack those things I excluded initially. All those accessories, underthings, shoes, workout gear, outerwear, etc. I’ll spare you the blow by blow on each, but let’s just say it took awhile to get through everything. I used the same Love, Hate, Maybe system though, and it worked swimmingly.

Now my closet is looking lean and clean and I’m loving it. I’ll be sharing the pieces that made the cut soon. If you simply can’t stand the anticipation, you can follow me on Instagram and see my daily outfits. I swear, I’m going to start posting them regularly!