5 Lessons in Closet Cleaning
'Tis the season + other reflections on a year since I launched Wear Your Clothes
There’s a lightness in the air. Bird song, real or imagined, floats through opened windows. You start lighting candles for no reason and humming along to Ariana Grande. It’s spring—that time of the year where optimism feels as inevitable as inhaling. Even when you’re not ready to accept it, your body is primed to come out of hibernation bright eyed and bushy tailed.
From my one-bedroom room apartment, shared with a darling husband and a newly acquired set of additional Ikea closets, spring sends a shudder down my spine. It’s time for a closet clean. And not the kind that you reward yourself with a coffee from La Colombe after tossing a bag into the Goodwill bins, oh no. I’m talking a capital-c Clean with blood, sweat, and tears.
A year ago, I created Wear Your Clothes, a Notion template for building a closet of clothes you actually wear. The process of putting together the template, especially the Closet Inventory section, was incredible. I made all sorts of promises to myself like “I’ll always keep things as neat as they look now” or “I’m done buying clothes that aren’t tailor-made.” Closet Cleans make us say crazy things.
The problem, the luck, the situation, however you frame it, is two-fold.
My body has changed since I was a twenty-something working in fashion with an undiagnosed eating disorder.
Receiving clothes to try, be photographed in, and post about is a very real part of my job.
Maybe you’ve been the same size since middle school or you work as a high school principal and wish you too were running a small shipment center out of your aforementioned one-bedroom apartment. Wherever you land on the body and consumption spectrum, here are five tips (reframes, starts, truths) that have helped me come to terms with the inevitable, ever-evolving magic that is a personal closet.
Pay as much attention to what you’re letting go of as you are to what you’re keeping.
Our first unlock comes from personal experience. I love button downs. While other girls were opting for flutter sleeve numbers, I opted for a sensible blue (my forever favorite color) button down and a middle part for the 2004 Daddy Daughter Dance. (Me acknowledging that Jim has always been the cutest thing.)
Cute memory—how is it relevant? Over the years, I’ve stuck with button downs. I know what I like—a long sleeve pushed up, wide in the body with a little length, but not too much. But even though I know exactly what I like, that doesn’t mean I haven’t faltered.
I’ve tried cropped button ups. Boxy button ups. Button ups with bows. Button ups without collars! Button ups of an asymmetrical nature. Button ups made of linen. Button ups with short sleeves or no sleeves. The reality is: I never end up keeping them. Not to drag myself, but the outfit below is a perfect example. I bought that silk button up at a thrift store, wore it a few times, and just never liked the way it looked like a PJ shirt.
If I was just looking at the clothes that have been in my closet for years, I could surmise, “Oh, I love a button up!” If I integrate the learnings from all the shirts I’ve donated, I could more accurately say, “I love a true menswear button up without frill, ideally with a monogram, made of cotton, and generally in a stripe or shade of blue or white.”
Don’t keep clothes for a “good body day” or a “goal weight.” If it doesn’t feel good to wear on the third day of your period, really interrogate what it’s doing in your closet.
My closet used to be home to dozens of pieces I’d consider as a goal. If I had a big date, I’d hang a particularly tight dress that zipped about half of the time on my closet door as a reminder. And if I fit at the end of the week, it didn’t matter how the date went. I felt like I’d accomplished something.
I’m talking about body image, people! Clothes are so emotional. And sometimes, we set ourselves up to fail when it comes to the clothes we keep in our closets. I recently donated a bunch of slip dresses that always made me super self-conscious. Life is too short to be worrying about your stomach at a dear friend’s wedding.
So if sorting your clothes feels emotional—I get it! DM me and we can talk about how much it sucks. But this tip is a reminder that sometimes we outgrow our clothes in the same we outgrow the versions of ourselves that got us to where we are today.
Have you worn it in the last six months? Do you plan to wear it in the next six months?
Another way to think about this is “Does wearing this piece of clothing require planning or eye rolling on your behalf because there’s a better version of it in your closet that you always want to reach for instead?”
I’m all about a special piece, the kind you whip out for your BFF’s bday party or plan to wear to a someday wedding reception, but when we start stockpiling these, it really begs the question, “What kind of life do we want to be living?” If I had a toppling pile of wool sweaters and snowpants in my closet, I might start asking myself if trying out a stay in Vermont might be interesting. When I nannied fulltime, I longed for a reason to wear the fab vintage dresses I’d lugged from Iowa to New York. Now that I have a reason to wear them, I can smile at the girl who always hoped she would.
But to be practical and Midwestern for a minute: if you haven’t worn it and it’s been a year, let it go.
Look back on moments in your life when you were deeply happy and unencumbered. What were you wearing?
Another flashback: the leather jacket I got for my birthday in 2002. I’m blissed out. That’s just the face I make when I get my hands on 100% genuine leather, don’t worry about it. It’s a fun exercise to look back at photos of yourself as a kid and see the correlation between what you were drawn to then and what you wear now.
I like looking at the pictures from vacation where I’m chilled the F out, not asking Christian to take an outfit pic for IG, and notice what I’m wearing. Turns out: I love being in a button down, athletic shorts, and a baseball hat. When I apply that context to my closet, I can make a little more space for athletic shorts and button downs knowing they’re what I picture when I think of my ideal day.
It’s always about the mother.
Bet you thought I didn’t know how to use GIPHY! I work in tech, guys. Any way, the reason I’m calling in this timeless moment from 20th Century Women is because I think about this line all the time.
We’ll save the therapizing for actual, licensed therapists, but this line is great to keep in mind when shopping and cleaning your closet. “What does that piece of clothing actually represent?”
Sometimes it’s “a weekend I went to the Emily Dickinson house with Ruby and we thrifted in the dark because there was an electrical outage” and other times it’s an ex-boyfriend. There are no good or bad reasons or representations. It’s just important to acknowledge them.
I found this Molly Goddard set on The RealReal after I got a job offer last year. I was over the moon, so I decided to try it on at the Soho location on my way to a dinner with friends. Would I wear a plaid, cropped, ruched top…really never. But I wanted something to memorialize how proud I was for getting the job.
I could have bought the set! It would have been fine! But I decided to just take a picture and carry on. You can feel so happy and so accomplished without buying anything. And sometimes it’s nice to! But when we start marking every celebration with a purchase, it starts dulling the actual feeling.
So there you have it! Thank you to all of you who have purchased + used Wear Your Clothes. It means the world to me. I love the community here on Substack, and can’t wait for a lot more Long Live to come.
Thank you for reading Long Live. It means so much to me. You can shop my favs here, follow along on Instagram + Tiktok, and as always, respond to this dispatch for my direct line x
Such an amazing read!!!
This post is amazing!! Even the button-up anecdote is such a revelation; it’s easy to make a general statement on items we like, but it’s important to notice what we don’t like about items we do supposedly “like.”