Trying Out a Capsule Wardrobe

Anyone who knows me knows I love clothes. Like…I feel like I can never have enough clothes. My closets and drawers have always been packed to bursting with dresses, shirts, pants, shoes, etc, etc, etc.

Fast fashion and Amazon Prime have been my downfall. They make it too easy to just buy clothes all the time. And I’m weak…

I recently started reducing that massive collection by selling clothes on Poshmark. It helped me make some extra money for the wedding and reduced the inventory of my closet.

But it didn’t stop me from buying more clothes.

I find that I can pretty much always justify a new piece of clothing.

If there was ever a person who should try a capsule wardrobe…it’s for sure me.

I’ve been curious about capsule wardrobes ever since I first heard if them. My initial reaction was, “that’s insane. I can’t work with that little clothing for my style.” Even so, I ended up going through my closet and cleaning out a lot because #minimalism.

Anyway. I decided that this was the year that I was going to try a capsule wardrobe. I knew I needed to better utilize the clothes I owned. I just wasn’t wearing my closet to its full potential. I also knew that probably 50% of what was in my closet either didn’t apply to every season or just wasn’t something that I would wear year-round.

I started doing some research and came across this blog article. I think it is one of the best and most practical explanations and applications of a capsule wardrobe that I have seen. The basic idea is that you choose 15 tops, 9 bottoms, 9 shoes, and 4 dresses/jackets to keep in rotation for three months. The months follow the seasons (or typical seasons I should saw). January-March is Winter. April-June is Spring. July-September is Summer and October-December is Fall.

Unlike some of the more extreme capsule wardrobes, this method allows you to keep all the workout gear, lounge wear, and pajamas you want. Thumbs up from me. Because I was reallllly worried about the workout gear/PJs situation.

Last week I took all my things out of my closet and laid them out in the living room. For many of the items it was easy to toss them in the box for storage. They just were not appropriate for winter (such as winter is in Atlanta…).

Other things I found myself a little more hesitant to give up on the pretense of “Wellllll….I might need this though.” Thankfully, I was able to stick to the task and whittle my wardrobe down to 16 tops, 9 bottoms, and 5 jackets/dresses.

Guys…my closet looks SO much better and to be honest, it’s forcing me to actually be creative with what I already own. I am only about a week and a bit into having this capsule so I’ll do another update mid-February. I feel like it’s maybe possible that I might start to get clothes-antsy again at that point.

That being said, this particular capsule method does tell you to shop for the next capsule a month prior for the next capsule. The idea of course being that you only buy what you truly don’t have or a few special year-round worthy pieces.

I feel like that is going to be a great way for me to cut down on clothes costs. If I can realistically only shop four times a year, that will save me lots on all those little and all too frequent purchases.

In the spirit of doing less and appreciating what I have more, I think that this capsule wardrobe is going to be good for me. I think it is going to bring back a lot of my style creativity and I am really excited for that. I feel like there is also the added bonus of avoiding fatigue of choice which I mean, who hasn’t felt that when they open their closet door sometimes?

I’m looking forward to testing this out. I think it’s going to be a good and interesting way to learn more about myself.