Decluttering Your Closet with Purpose
I don’t know about you, but I have a tendency to struggle with letting go of items that seem perfectly useful or hold potential value. I’m also in a line of work that puts a lot of free items in my possession. This can make it difficult and conflicting when deciding what to let go of, especially when I know I’m in a position of excess or surplus.
Something that’s helped me get clear when it comes to decluttering is knowing my purpose. But that statement itself can be more overwhelming. What is our purpose and what does having purpose even mean? Isn’t the whole point of this process to discover, create and refine our purpose?
Here’s the cool thing, when we break the process down into smaller bits, like decluttering… we start to widen our peripheral. Here’s an example of going through this process with my own closet…
#1 The first step is to identify the elements of my lifestyle and day, because this is going to largely effect the types of clothes I want to wear. I also want to identify why these elements are important to me.
Example:
Active = I want to be comfortable in my clothes, no matter what I’m doing.
Diverse Schedule / Travel = Clothes need to be suitable for multi-activity use. I don’t want to have to wear 3 different outfits per day.
Temperate Weather, Extremely hot summers & cool winters - Weather Flexible, efficient fabrics and layers that are compatible with the seasons and travel.
Business / Social = Aesthetics that are important to me are to look clean, well put together, no distracting colors or prints. I basically want to pick my top and bottom blindfolded and have them fall into all these categories! 😜
It’s important to do the identification process first. This will be the measuring stick that guides your choices not only when it comes to decluttering, but also acquiring.
#2 Simplify / Reduce everything that doesn’t fit into the elements you’ve identified. For myself, it’s important that most of my pieces fit into all 4 elements I’ve listed above. I definitely make exceptions, but I only have a few pieces that I do that for.
Everything else goes! Because the truth is, no matter how cute or how much I intend on wearing those uniquely colored pants, it’s probably never going to happen given my lifestyle and daily circumstances!
#3 The last step is to focus on the elements that are most important to you. For me that’s comfort, diversity, and clean aesthetics.
As I move forward, I find when I’m in need of certain items I’m emotionally detached from the flashy things at the stores. I won’t settle for anything less than what fits all the elements that are important to me and that has spared me conflict, time and energy, wasted money, and wasted space on things that are just so-so because my purpose wasn’t clear during my initial purchase.
I hope this process helps you just as much!
In love and gratitude,
~MJ