Wardrobe Clear Out and Re-organisation

As mentioned in a previous post, my wardrobe has been a source of frustration for a while now. It was rammed full of clothes, many of which I never wear and having a shelf at the top, made it difficult to access some items in there without needing to stand on a stool to reach to the back of the shelf.

As a consequence, and as part of my big 2021 declutter, on Sunday, I decided to tackle it and make it much easier to find items to wear.

To be honest, I rarely go into my wardrobe at the moment. I've spent this lockdown wearing tracksuit bottoms, t-shirts and sweaters, all of which I don't tend to hang, preferring to keep them folded in drawers, so I have little need to even look in my wardrobe, but I still wanted to have a good clearout, so that when I do return to work, picking clothes to wear will be much easier.

Whilst I'm happy to be wearing comfortable clothes during lockdown, I'm not happy that I have steadily been gaining weight over the past year and needed to take out of the wardrobe, any items that no longer fit or are not flattering.

Here's the wardrobe when I began the task of decluttering it:

I decided to proceed by trying on every item in the wardrobe and sifting out anything that didn't currently fit me. Thankfully, there were still plenty of clothes that still fitted, but in the hope of losing some of the weight again when things get back to normal and I can get back to exercising regularly, many of the things that were a bit small I decided to store away in the underbed storage for now, so that I could potentially wear them again in the future.

Items that I realistically felt that I would never wear again or were particularly unflattering weight gain or not, I put on the donate pile and then I created one more pile for things that I could potentially sell. These were mostly vintage or vintage style items, but I'm not sure when or if I'll ever get around to selling them. They may just end up getting donated further down the line, along with the ill fitting items, if I don't manage to lose the weight.

In total, I managed to find 32 items to donate, which I thought was a reasonable amount. I don't find it easy to get rid of clothes, as I can always think of a situation in which I might still wear them, but I tried to be as ruthless as I could this time. These items filled two black bin bags and will be finding their way to the donation bank this week.

Here's a picture of my bedroom mid declutter, with all the piles of clothing all over the bed and other parts of the room:

Once I'd decided what I was keeping, it was time to head out on a dog walk, so I asked OH if he could take out the top shelf from the wardrobe and move the clothing rail to the very top. My reason for this was two fold, firstly, so that I could hang my dresses properly as they often trailed on the shelf below and got caught on things on that shelf and secondly, it meant everything else was now on the lower shelves and much easier to access. It did mean that there was a little less shelving space, as I lost a shelf, but this helped to motivate me to get rid of more items so that everything would fit.

I did remove a few items from the wardrobe, mainly some vintage jewellery, which I found another space for elsewhere in the bedroom. This done, I was able to fit everything in and the hanging rail is now so much less congested and it is much easier to see what I have and to put things in and get them out. Most items are now hung singly, save for a couple of pairs of jeans and a few skirts which are hung two to a hanger.

Here is a picture of the results of the decluttering:

Overall, I'm very happy with how the wardrobe functions now and I look forward to going through all of my drawers and being as ruthless as I can there too. I will probably revisit some of the items under the bed that don't quite fit in a few months time, when I change over from my winter to summer wardrobe and I may feel I can let go of more. I'll keep you posted.