Do You Have Too Many Clothes?

Without even looking in your closets or drawers, I will hazard the guess that you have too many clothes.  By that I mean that you have clothes you hardly ever wear, as well as clothes you never wear, ever.

How do I know?  Because everyone has too many clothes.

Remember the 80-20 Rule, a.k.a. the Pareto Principle?  It applies to clothes as well.  We wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time.  That means that we are dedicating 80% of our precious closet and drawer space to clothes that rarely see the light of day.  Yikes!

Here’s an easy suggestion for identifying those clothes you no longer wear, without investing a lot of time cleaning out your closets and dressers:  rotate your clothes.

When put something away after wearing it or laundering it, put it in the back of the closet, or in the bottom of the drawer.  When you choose your outfit each day, select items from the front of the closet or the top of the drawer.  After a while, the stuff you wear regularly will be out of sight, and only the stuff you don’t like to wear will be front and center.  It will then be pretty apparent which clothes are no longer among the chosen few, and these are the ones you should get rid of.

Eventually, only your favorites will be left, and you will have beaten the 80-20 rule!

How do you maintain this equilibrium once all of the rejects have been weeded out?  By applying Organizing Goddess® Principle #4: One in, one out.  Every time you get a new item of clothing (including shoes, ladies!), an old one has to go.  Otherwise, the 80-20 rule will reassert itself.

Give my method a try, and let me know how it works out for you.

  1. […] people have too many clothes.  We wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time.  (See my earlier post Do You Have Too Many Clothes?)  If everyone got rid of the clothes that don’t make them look fabulous, then they would be […]

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