Closet-Palooza: How to Clean Your Closet

Closet cleanses should be undertaken somberly and consistently. As a new season is budding, as a new life calling is dawning, as you find yourself glazing over at the threshold of your wardrobe’s abyss, all of these indicate optimal conditions for a purging, especially if you find yourself wondering if you could do with a bigger closet (which you could check out right here) but that is what closet cleanses are for right? To put your mind at ease.

Below are specific pre-requisites to ensure a safe, successful procedure:

• An uninterrupted block of time
  to clearly compare the best and worst in your closet
• Sharp, clean, distributed lighting
  natural lighting is best for evaluating the effect of color
• Full length mirror
  every angle should be visible
• Makeup free face
  to avoid clothing stains
• Shape stabilized figure
  apply bra, shapers, etc.
• A trustworthy, opinionated friend
  while husbands are accessible, they aren’t always patient

The 5 Piles

1. Keep: When you walk by the mirror in these items, it should compel a brief pause, during which a smile flutters across your face. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but it does have to flatter.

2. Archive: Are your winter boots currently residing in company with your flip flops? For shame, keeping seasonally distinct items in a single closet (even in Arizona) not only makes for fashion overwhelm, but it also makes your clothes very sad. It’s like serving tuna with peanut butter, it just isn’t right. Now for those items that you loved upon purchased, proceeded to wear for a straight fortnight, and in consequence is now prematurely jaded, I suggest archival. Archive all that is tired, seasonally inappropriate, or just inconclusive. Then reassess in 3-6 months, and ditch anything you’re still not ready to wear immediately. Don’t underestimate the thrill of fashion reunion.

This is not however a dumping ground for fashion memorabilia. If you don’t plan to wear it within the calendar year, take a picture of it and donate it.

3. Repair: Immediately place items that are soiled, torn, de-buttoned, or otherwise injured in a fashion ambulance. If they have not been hemmed, cleaned, or repaired within a week, consider how much these items mean to you.

4. Give-Away: Donate items that don’t fit your body or style but are in good condition. If you are having a difficult time parting with an item that no longer flatters your figure, find a specific friend or charity to give it to. Or better yet, organize a clothing exchange, in which friends can bring all their items that are in good condition, but no longer employed by their closets.

5. Throw-Away: Items that are stained, torn, or otherwise beyond repair. Enough said.

Removal tips for stubborn squatters
every item in your closet should be paying rent with useful wear

• Hang all your garments backwards (with the hook facing open towards you.) As you wear a garment replace it in the closet in the reverse direction. If you have transposed hangers at the end of twelve months, item extermination should be executed.
• If you struggle to part with a well-loved, but useless item of attire, take a picture of it. Write a story to accompany the image, draw therapeutic hearts and stars around it if it helps, but abandon the actual item.