One of my goals is to say no to some things, so I can have the time and space to say yes to the things I love and want to do.
After reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo in the summer of 2015, a friend and I tidied our homes. We would text each other pictures as we gathered like items from all over our houses and sort them – keeping only what we needed and loved.
A year later I am using the things I love and not spending time shopping, cleaning, dusting and moving around things I don’t.
This summer I decided to take it a step further with Project 333 Challenge. The rules were:
- Choose 33 pieces of clothes to wear for 3 months.
- This includes shoes, purses and coats.
- This does not include exercise clothes, underwear or pajamas.
- I didn’t include church/funeral clothes and the jewelry.
- Choose pieces that you can mix and match. I choose blue and purple with pops of orange.
Here’s what my closet looked like:
- 7 tank tops
- 7 t-shirts
- 2 sleeveless light sweaters
- 3 sweaters (light long sleeve, light short sleeve, heavy long sleeve)
- 2 pair shorts
- 2 sundresses
- 1 long sundress
- 1 skirt
- 1 skort
- 1 pair jeans
- 1 capri pants
- 1 purse
- 4 shoes (1 dress sandal, 3 casual)
Positive Takeaways
- Empty space in my brain -not having to think about what I was going to wear each day.
- Feeling confident – everything in my closet fit me and I felt comfortable wearing it.
- Not shopping – I actually felt like I had more clothes in my closet than when my walk-in closet was stuffed.
- Compliments -I got more compliments than when I was choosing from a closet full of clothes
- Lifestyle – I realized that even thought I prefer to dress up, my lifestyle is casual.
- Laundry – I had less laundry to do. I still don’t understand why-but I did.
Negative Takeaways
- Choices –I felt like I had lots of choices the first two months, but by August I felt like I was wearing some of the same clothes over and over.
- I didn’t wear all the clothes – We had a hot summer so I didn’t wear the jeans, capris, heavy sweater or tee shirts. I didn’t wear the skort, light short-sleeve sweater or one of the casual sandals much at all. A little tweaking next summer should solve the negatives.
- Long Tank Tops – At 5’11” the one I have just aren’t long enough
I’ve realized that every item I own comes with two price tags. The purchase price and the ongoing cost of cleaning, organizing, storing and thinking about it. I choose to keep things that I love and are useful to me so I can have more time to do the things I want to.
What do you think? Does this sound like something you’d like to try or does it sound too crazy to you?
I just went through my own clothes… nothing so radical as you, of course! I wonder if this post would be a good place to mention the fact that if you pare down on clothes, you can share your closet with your hubbie and use the free one for prayers! 😉
I appreciate how you organize your thoughts. Your posts are so easy to follow.
That is a good point – the huge pile of clothes in the pic above? I weeded through them the week before I watched War Room and then begged my husband for his closet. No way would I have had room to fit all his clothes in mine if God hadn’t been clearing the path ahead of time. Isn’t it awesome how He does that?!
I imagine your closet expedition wasn’t as daunting because you are already pretty minimalist by nature. I’m getting there 🙂