Weekend Plans Post: On the Clothes that Spark Joy

A few years back, we said “We need to start culling the clothing every other year” and we did the thing where we’d look at the collars of the shirts, and the seams, and think about the last time we put this on and then put clothing in one of three piles:

1. To keep in rotation
2. To donate to Goodwill
3. To throw away

And we could turn a closet that was pretty stuffed into one where that was only merely kinda stuffed.

A couple years ago, we said “you know what? Let’s not do it this year. It can wait until 2020.”

And, well, 2020 was kind of a rough year.

So it is now October 2021 and we have said “SERIOUSLY, WE ARE GOING TO DO A CULL” and that is the plan for this weekend.

Take every item of clothing you have (you don’t have to empty out the sock drawer but, seriously, look and see if you’ve worn the ones in the back corner in the last 12 months… if you haven’t, do you still need them?) and throw it on the bed.

Then, one at a time, either put it back in the closet on a hangar, put it in the box to take to Goodwill, or put it in one of the trashbags.

Contrary to the title of the post, you don’t have to do a full Marie Kondo when you clean stuff out. A simple answer of “yes” to the “Do I wear this to work?” question will suffice to put the work clothing back in the closet (after checking the amount of wear on the collar, of course) but when it came to the weekend and vacation clothing, you could do worse than to ask about joy being sparked. I mean, sure, the lawn mowing shirt has a function and its function does not include joy on any particular level. But the shirts that you haven’t worn since you got them as a gift in 2018? It might be time for someone who wants to wear them to wear them.

Now, I have two exceptions. There are two shirts that I have that spark joy every time I look at them and even though I haven’t worn them for more than a year, I can’t wait to wear them again:
The Fourth Of July Shirt
The Embroidered Roses Shirt

The rest? Well, figure out which shirts never get worn, not even when a weekend of laundry is skipped. Those go bye-bye. Then turn to the fun clothing and do the same.

And then be surprised at how you can hang stuff up easily.

One thing Maribou pointed out is that we haven’t culled the towels since we moved into the house. So we get to go through and ask “why do we still have these stripey ones that look like they came from a set of Robocop? Do you even remember the last time you used them?” and then check to see if they’re still soft enough to donate and then they can leave as well.

And then we’ll boggle at how it’s Sunday night and wonder whatever happened to the weekend.

So… what’s on your docket?

(Featured image is “laundry” by bies and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)