What Season Is It Today?

It’s hard to know how to dress when the weather can’t make up its mind what season we’re in. I did my laundry yesterday, and I observed that over the past week, I wore one turtleneck, three long-sleeved shirts, and three short-sleeved shirts. There were two pairs of shorts in the load as well. We went from winter to summer (with a short stop at spring) in less than a week. And today we are back at winter.

I feel very fortunate that I have easy access to all of my clothing, regardless of the weather. That enables me to pivot from cashmere and boots on Sunday to shorts and sandals on Wednesday. But this doesn’t happen by accident.

I decided that I wanted to write an organizing tip about this, but I knew I had written about it in the past. I searched the archives on my web site and then I found it: “Making Our Closets Work Year Round.” I wrote that post on April 5, 2010, which was a surprise to me. I thought the seesawing weather was a more recent phenomenon but apparently it was common enough 16 years ago that I was motivated to write about it.

In that post, I gave some advice that I think is still sound: “As you make your spring transition this year, I recommend that you spend some time reviewing all of your clothes and getting rid of those that you seldom wear. This will free up space for the items of clothing that will help us through the awkward transitions between seasons. Identify which winter clothes you didn’t wear at all, or wore but didn’t enjoy, as well as the summer clothes that you forgot you had and really aren’t looking forward to wearing. Give those away, and use that empty space to keep more of your off-season clothes accessible.”

You can read the post to learn strategies about what to do if you still don’t have enough space to keep everything at your fingertips. Some apartments really are too small to keep all of your clothes available at the same time. But having fewer clothes helps a lot. The less you have, the more you can keep accessible — and the easier it is to find what you are looking for every time you get dressed. Having too many choices really doesn’t make you happier.