Happy Wednesday!

We may have heard about a detox for our bodies, but what about for our closet?

Detoxing is the removal of unhealthy substances. We mainly associate detoxing with our health, but there are many other ways to detox, whether it be detoxing clothes, finances, etc.

A few days ago, right before I was supposed to be exercising, I walked into my closet to pick out my outfit for work the next day. As I was standing there, I had a sudden impulse to clean out the closet. These sudden cleaning impulses don’t happen very often, so I knew I needed to act on the impulse.

My closet has been collecting clothes for years. There are clothes in my closet that I have had since high school. I’ve only been out of college for a few years, so it isn’t that drastic, but it still sounds pretty bad that I’ve waited this long to do a good “deep-clean” of my closet.

I randomly started grabbing hangers that held clothes I knew I never really wear and probably never will. The pile of clothes continued to grow. I put the clothes into garbage bags and wound up with 3 garbage bags filled with clothes I never wear.

I immediately thought about when I was moving just over a year ago and how if I had purged before the move that that would have saved me  some space for other things.

There are so many ways to get rid of clothes nowadays. We can try to sell them on Ebay/ Etsy/ Poshmark/ Thredup or we can donate them.

Growing up my mom almost always had a garbage bag sitting in a closet. This garbage bag was for whenever my family or I had a piece of clothing we never wore or didn’t want any longer. Once that bag was filled, we would take it to a nearby drop box that looked like this:

The clothes we no longer wore became something important to the person that received it from Planet Aid. Knowing we are helping someone else even by giving away some of our clothes can leave us with an awesome feeling. That awesome feeling we are filled with when we help someone else is hard to beat.

It took me awhile to purge, hence the 3 garbage bags. I’ve found a few tips that helped me with my purge and hopefully will help you too:

• Turn hangers backwards. When we put the hanger back, we are placing the hanger forwards. After a certain amount of time, the hangers that are still backwards will indicate the clothes that are never worn.
• One in, one out rule: Purchasing a dress for an event coming up? Go through your closet to see what one item of clothing you could stand to part with.
• We all know what our favorite items of clothing are and the pieces we never wear. If we can’t even remember the last time we wore something, it’s probably time to get rid of it!

We can think an item of clothing is really cute or that we may wear it someday, but if we never wear those clothes, we shouldn’t be letting those clothes take up space! That space could be used for cute clothes we will actually wear.

So, if you also have those sudden cleaning impulses, take action on those cleaning impulses! What will be left of your closet, will hopefully be a wardrobe you will be proud of!

Photo cred: freshome.com; ellsworthamerican.com