Mary has always loved clothes. It started when her mother dressed Mary and her sister in matching outfits. Then, as a young wife and mom, Mary sewed clothing for herself and her children. Later, when she became a single mom, Mary began shopping at secondhand stores. She enjoyed the thrill of finding a great piece at a great price. Knowing what she liked, Mary started collecting the same item in a rainbow of colours! It was fun, fresh, and it made her happy. She would choose her clothes with relish. She prided herself in looking well put together even when she was just spending the day at home. With plenty of options to choose from, Mary felt like she lived in a candy store and she loved it!

Meet Mary, the Clothes-Lover

Do you think it’s possible to have too many clothes? Mary didn’t think so!

But when Mary called me, she’d been living out of laundry baskets and in the same six or so outfits for months. 

How had it come to this?*

A Vicious Cycle

There are a lot of reasons why clothes can sit in laundry baskets. Sometimes —though very rarely— the problem is that the client simply does not have what they need to store their belongings easily. In other words, the client needs furniture or a closet system. But that wasn’t the case here.

Mary had more than enough furniture. She’d even built a dressing room from Ikea years ago. It was so full she could not get into it. (That story, coming soon.) In addition, the bedroom itself was crowded with five dressers, a shoe cubby and a bookcase packed full of – you guessed it – more clothing! Mary had simply run out of places to put her clothes. Despite her best efforts, she could no longer put them away because there was simply nowhere left to put them.

As a result, clothes would sit in baskets for weeks waiting to be put away. She began to buy duplicates because she was losing track of her clothes. A vicious cycle had begun.

Decluttering Difficulties

It’s always best to start with whatever is easy

I suggested we start with her outdated clothing — like the skirt suits from the 80’s which had not been worn for decades. Unfortunately, this was not an easy starting place for Mary. Those skirt suits represented an extremely successful period in Mary’s life and she was reluctant to let them go. 

When dealing with items that define who we once were, it can be helpful to give our belongings to an organization, charity or person that means something to you, as I discussed in the blog, “Three Beliefs that Derail your Decluttering.” After some pause and thoughtful discussion, Mary decided to let these items go. Though these suits were too outdated to be donated to a charity like Suit Yourself, they did go to another charity that accepts clothes.

Another area of low hanging fruit is clothing that no longer fits. We tried that next – but this wasn’t easy either! 

Mary had become ill and lost weight so a lot of her clothing was too loose. Since she didn’t like the fit, that became the strategy for getting rid of them. But as the donation pile grew larger and larger, she became nostalgic for the days when she could play dress-up with her clothes. 

Dealing with Mary’s clothing, even outdated or ill-fitting, was complex.

As we discussed how she selects what she wants to wear for the day, Mary mentioned that she had collected all of these clothes because she’d thought having lots of things to wear would give her more choices. But, Mary had realized, it didn’t work out that way. Instead, she was overwhelmed. With so many options — she hadn’t known what to choose! **

Custom Criteria

As Mary and I decluttered, it also emerged that she liked to dress all in one colour head to toe. Understanding her tastes and style is just what we needed to be able to organize her clothes in a way that would make sense. We had learned so much!

We had established criteria to “stay” –the clothes had to fit well, be in one of her favourite colours, and she had to love it. 

With that, our goal could shift to getting rid of some of the furniture that crowded her small bedroom – she was excited by this goal!

After decluttering and collecting her favourite outfits by colour and putting them in the boxes on the book case, Mary was able to remove one of the dressers from her bedroom. 

She was thrilled with the extra space and ease with which she can manage her clothes. Mary was surprised to learn that having too many options can be as bad—or worse—than having too few. Her downsizing journey had taught her so much.

Takeaway

Organizing is about adjusting your physical space to work for your current life, the life you have now and the near future. Organizing is about restoring function to systems that have broken down, like putting away laundry, or finding the clothes you want to wear on any given day. But to get there, we have to face and release anything that doesn’t fit our current life. And that means facing what doesn’t work; including the past and beliefs that no longer work for us, so that we can live with ease in rooms we love.

Notes and Resources:

* these photos are used with permission. Ironically, in order to access the room to take pics, I had removed most of the laundry baskets to the hallway. I also tidied before taking these.

 ** As it happens, scientific study bears this out. Known as the jam experiment, it was the first to show the negative effects of too many choices. 

When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing? by Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, Vol. 79, No. 6, 995-1006