Are you ready to free yourself of the decisions and frusturation from your clothing and possessions?
Now is the time! This frusturation people often experience is due to the ever common decision fatigue, an effect of the modern world of consumption. This gesture will address this indecision at the source. The effect of this sort of clutter in the home not only affects our clothing choices, but seeps into other areas of our lives – relationships, work, leisure and more. Overall, ‘stuff’ and ‘things’ can be exhausting! A big part of the minimising process is to reveal and understand what we already own and therefore reinvigorate older, forgotten items. This will reduce the need to instinctively buy new, brining economic and environmental benefits to your footprint. A few options are available to get you started which we list below, but first to set you on this path, make a commitment to not buy any clothes for 3 months. Get your friends involved and you’ll have each other to keep you accountable!
And remember, the biggest, most crucial piece of this puzzle is endeavouring to, overall, just buy less!
Action steps:
1. Start by undertaking a clothing inventory by category. This will perhaps involve a bit of a cull and will definitely require challenging yourself to be less sentimental about your clothing items. Marie Kondo offers a great methodology for this sort of culling, through organising and folding in a certain way so you visually have full scope of all of the items in your possession, assisting with your motivation to minimise!
2. You can then establish two piles of your organised items, creating a seasonal Capsule Wardrobe. This involves, sorting and segmenting your clothing into winter and summer piles, and putting the relevant clothing for that time of year clearly displayed and prominent in your cupboard
3. At this point of the process, closely go through and separate the clothing you want to pass on. You could send photos to your friends in a message feed (a virtual clothes swap of sorts!) or put them aside and organise an in person clothes swap.
4. If there are items which you want to donate, check they are in good condition for donating and find your closest charity drop off point.
5. If there are a few items not suitable for donating, check for textile recycling programs near you