Tips to detox your whole life
Hi all, another loooooong post coming up in my “Lockdown Detox Series.” Make yourself a cuppa…
So, my 6th detox suggestion is to get rid of your clothes. There’s never been a better time!
No, I’m not really saying you have to get naked, but let’s face it, thanks to Coronavirus, many of us have found ourselves in the enviable position of having a lot more free time on our hands. Of course some of us have kids around who eat into most of those free minutes, but I’m about to recommend a very rewarding detox activity you can do with the kids in tow. The older ones will get so bored after 2 minutes, they’ll be asking you if they can go and play Lego before you know it in any case!
First, answer me this? Have you ever stood and looked your wardrobe and thought “I have nothing to wear”? Well unless you are very different to the “average Australian”, you most likely have a wardrobe full of very wearable clothes. In fact, it’s estimated each of us spend approximately $2000 a year on buying fashion. So there’s a very good chance that you ‘having nothing to wear’ simply means that you’re so overwhelmed by choice, finding an outfit has become a chore!
But fear not! I have the solution! A Wardrobe Detox!
All you have to do is follow some of these steps to make the whole process easy and satisfying. Now, I’m well aware that a certain Marie Kondo got here just before me. [I swear, if I knew that you could make millions telling people to tidy up their crap, I’d have changed professions years ago]! However, I am no Marie Kondo. I love a tidy house, but I will not be folding my plastic bags into triangles any time soon. So, consider this a cheat’s version if you like!
Let’s get started: The first priority, make some time for your wardrobe detox. Ideally, set aside a couple of hours.
Next step is to psych yourself up. You really need to be in an objective mood so you can cull without getting sentimentally ‘involved’. If you think you’ll need a critical eye, line up a facetime or zoom chat with a friend who you know will give you an honest opinion. Sisters are THE BEST for this!
Pop on your dressing gown, because if you’re going to do this properly, you’ll be hopping in and out of clothes.
Do not, I repeat, do not, have a glass of wine first – you’ll need a cool head!
Grab 4 garbage bags and a bunch of empty hangers. Label the bags: Op Shop (Charity shop for overseas reader), Repairs, Friends and Recycling and the hangers are for anything that you think has a re-sale value. More on each of these later.
OK, now you’re ready. Let’s begin. This part is where Marie Kondo would make you take everything out of your wardrobe and dump it on your bed. Gulp. I’m not going to make you do that. We already know we have too much stuff and this isn’t reality TV.
So, choose where to start. I always start with the type of clothes I wear most often, so I can get those tidied and sorted and that sense of satisfaction urges me on. For me that’s dresses. I hang all dresses and have them roughly sorted, i.e. into formal, corporate (just in case), work, casual and very casual (i.e. beachy). Then I order them according to length and whether or not they have sleeves. Some people go as far as sorting everything by colour. If this makes sense to you, go for it!
There will always be a few things that you’ll need to try and to make sure it still looks good on you. Whilst you’re going through each item, take a look and make sure it’s worth holding onto. For example, if it’s damaged or has piling all over, ask yourself if it’s really worth keeping? If it needs to be repaired, stick it in the repair bag. If it’s not worth the cost or effort to repair it, then donate it to a recycling centre.
Planet Ark’s Recycling Near You is a great resource to find who takes garments for recycling locally. H&M and Zara both accept any brand of clothes to be recycled and Sheridan takes pre-loved sheets and towels. Using these services could save some of the estimated 500,000 tonnes of textiles sent to landfill each year.
What about the clothes that are still like new but you don’t wear? If it’s cute, but doesn’t fit quite right, then perhaps you can gift it to a friend? If you bought something really expensive but just haven’t had to occasion to wear it yet, consider that you might not actually ever get to wear it and consider selling it online. There are great sites for designer re-sale and eBay the rest. As a general rule of thumb, if you haven’t worn anything for the past 12 months, it ought to go. This is a cool trick for t-shirts…grab the bottom third of the pile and pop them straight into the Op-shop bag! If you don’t look, you won’t even know what’s in there, I promise you.
That’s the easy bit. But we also have the sentimental pieces. For my part, I still have a skirt that I adore and shall never part with that I bought in Camden town with one of my first London wage packets. It saw me through a lot of weird and wonderful dates so every time I look at it, I remember those fun times! I also have a Ganesh t-shirt I bought whilst backpacking in India many moons ago. And even more moons before that I was gifted a T-shirt by a patient (a crew-member from the 1989–90 Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race) that I looked after when I was a student nurse. I’ve only kept it for 31 years. Sentimental? Me? Never!
So, long story short, there will always be those pieces that you just can’t bear to part with. And that’s fine. It’s good to take them out every once in a while, let them make you smile, pop them in the wash and lovingly restore them to your wardrobe. Alternately, if you have something in your wardrobe that makes you feel sad, such as that dress you wore to a funeral of a loved one, or the jeans that you bought that you never got to fit into, then it’s time to say farewell to those.
Once you’ve been through everything, give the shelves a quick spring clean if they need it and make sure you fold or hang everything away properly. I find it best to organise into “compartments”; i.e. gym clothes, work tops, ‘going out’ tops, every day tops, t-shirts, jackets, long dresses, short dresses, long jackets etc. etc.
Hopefully you ought to have 4 full garbage bags and a row of hangers for stuff that can be photographed and listed for sale online. Now, here’s a sticking-bit. You may not look in those garbage bags again and you may not return the items for sale back into your wardrobe. Just don’t.
Then all that’s left is to pat yourself on the back and take stock of how much you actually need. For my part, I have a ‘one in, one out’ rule so if I buy a new dress, I have to get rid of an old one that I don’t wear as often. I find it makes me far more mindful about what I really ‘need’ to buy. As an avid op-shopper, I’m content that I’m not contributing to the waste problem, but even so, I have had to train myself to be a little less ‘spontaneous’!
I promise you, you’ve have a huge sense of relief once you can see and appreciate every item in your wardrobe. So, are you going to take on the challenge?
Let me know how it goes will you?
