shopping your closet can create a wardrobe you love
If you’ve been with me for a while, you know that a few times a year we do a Shop Your Closet Challenge, and it’s starting tomorrow! All of the details are below, but this challenge means that we all shop our closets for inspiration outfits that I choose and then we all come up with our own version of it.
More than ever, shopping your closet can be a great way to create a wardrobe you love, and I’m sharing ten reasons why you’ll see huge benefits from it. I talk a lot about shopping your closet, and with the Classic Wardrobe Guides, one of the very first Style Steps covers how to shop your closet. I intentionally create the Guides around classic items you likely already have, and then add a few special items to refresh your wardrobe and make it feel new. Sometimes just one or two new things makes everything feel fresh. Read part 1 of this series here.
This article and the video below are taken from the Stunning Style Weekly Style Snack! Join us Wednesdays at 1pm ET on the Stunning Style Facebook page or the FREE Capsule Wardrobes for Classic Style Facebook Group.
Recognize Trends in What You Do and Don’t Love
As you shop your closet, rediscover favorites and cultivate a working wardrobe, you will start to see which items you reach for over and over again, and which ones you keep passing over. What trends do you notice about the items you wear the most? And what is the common thread among the things you don’t wear? Make note of them.
Fewer Shopping Mistakes
The process of going through your closet to wear what you already have will bring you so many insights about what you actually wear that you’ll make fewer shopping mistakes in the future. Instead of shopping aimlessly to fill an unidentified hole, you will shop with purpose and purchase things that will actually help your wardrobe be more functional, and complete.
Leaving the stores empty-handed after hours of shopping can feel like failure, and buy something, ANYTHING, can feel like your efforts weren’t wasted. If you know what you are looking for, you’ll come home with solutions instead of more frustration.
Get Out of Your Outfit Rut
I’m never more creative with my outfits than when I pack for a trip. I always pack in only a carry on, and the options for mixing and matching such a small collection become even more obvious.
Last summer we had to completely move out of our house for five weeks while repairs from a water leak were being done. I only took 7 tops, 5 bottoms, 1 dress, 2 pairs of shoes, and some swimsuits. I mixed and matched those pieces over and over in ways I never had.
The creative juices start flowing and the possibilities become obvious when you narrow down the options. Instead of reaching for the same bottoms to go with that same top AGAIN, other combinations become more obvious, and new favorite outfits are born!
Sometimes it’s not that you don’t like an item, but you aren’t sure how to wear it in a way you’ll love. Not everyone is a mix and match dresser/shopper like I am. A lot of women are outfit shoppers. They purchase entire outfits and only wear those pieces together. With the Stunning Style Wardrobe Guides, you get 100 outfit templates to give you inspiration for how to wear pieces you probably already own in different ways. You’re going to see what that’s like with the Shop Your Closet Challenge.
Purging Becomes Effortless
If you’re anything like me, you’re always looking for ways to clean out your wardrobe. Shopping your closet gives you opportunities to wear items you’ve ignored or forgotten. As each one comes off the hanger and you try it on, or even wear it for the day, focus on how you feel in it. Do you like it? Do you look forward to wearing it again? If the answer is no, instead of putting it back on the hanger and ignoring it for another year (or 5), put it in the discard box.
If you love it, then it goes back in the rack. Suddenly purging your closet becomes an effortless task that happens one day and one item at a time instead of a dreaded chore that overwhelms you so much you shut down every time you consider getting started.
It’s Easy to Get Organized
As you work your way through your closet and release the items you don’t love, discover buried treasure, and refine your wardrobe, you can put back the things you choose to keep in a way that keeps your closet organized. One of the annual member bonuses in the Stunning Style Society is a tour of my new closet and organization tips so you can see how I’ve done it.
It’s easy to get excited and pull your closet apart to reorganize, but that can also be frustrating. Moving things one piece at a time can be more doable. Parting with items you don’t love makes room to organize the things you do love, and because you can now see what you have, it’s easier to know how you want to organize things.
Having an organized closet saves so much time because I know exactly where everything is, and I can go right to it without having to sort through every single hanger.
