Why Vegetables Are Better Than Clothes

Time and again, clients call me to organize their overstuffed closets and dresser drawers.   Most of the time, they swear to me before we start that they really do wear all of those clothes.  Once we get started, however, I hear the usual comments:

“That hasn’t fit me in years.”

“I never felt comfortable in that.”

“That has a huge stain on it.”

And my favorite: “Oh, I’d forgotten I had that!”

Why do closets and dressers get so stuffed over time?    Because we love getting new clothes — they fit well, they flatter what our bodies look like now, they are in this year’s colors and styles, and they aren’t faded, stretched out, or shrunk from years of laundering.

Clothes flow easily into our lives, but they have no exit strategy.  Unlike the items you pick up at the drug store, they have no expiration dates.

That’s why I like vegetables.  If you buy a vegetable and leave it in your refrigerator too long, it lets you know.  It gets soft and squishy and very unappealing to eat.   Clothes lose their appeal as well, but they don’t give us such clear signals so we don’t always realize it.

If you are fighting a daily war with your closets and drawers, make some time this summer to review everything in them and eliminate the clothes that you aren’t wearing.  (Hint: Most of that stuff is at the bottom of the drawer or the back of the closet.)

When you discover long-lost favorites that you had forgotten about, make an effort to wear them within a week after rediscovering them!

Think you’d rather have root canal then tackle your closet?  Ask for help from a practical friend or a professional organizer.

  1. […] clothing does not come with an expiration date the way drugstore items do.  (See my earlier post, Why Vegetables Are Better Than Clothes).  Many of us think that if we buy something and don’t use it right away, it will still be […]

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