How to: Purge Your Closet for the New Year

As the end of the year approaches, many people are beginning to brainstorm their anticipated New Year resolutions. While some may plan to start a new and healthy lifestyle, others might plan to do other things like a wardrobe detox.

The end of the year is a great time to go through your closet and get rid of the garments you no longer wear. However, some people have a hard time parting ways with items they swear they will wear again.

By following a few simple steps, detaching yourself from your myriad of clothes is made easy.

Step one:

Go through your wardrobe and separate it into two sections – What you regularly wear and what you rarely wear.

Be extra honest with this step. If you haven’t worn the garment within the past month, consider it something that you do not wear.

Step two:

For a one-week period, try and wear only clothes from your rarely worn section.

Although this may be difficult to do, it will really open your eyes to see if you still like the clothing enough to wear it out in public. If you find yourself instantly changing out of the clothes and not committing to them, put them in a separate pile.

This pile will become the discard pile.

Step three:

Donate, give away and pitch.

This step can go one of three ways. Depending on your attachment to the item and its condition, you can choose to either donate the item to a thrift store or resale store, give it away to a family member in hopes they will get more use out of it or just throw it away all together.

Note: Clothing with holes or tears should most likely be thrown away altogether.

Step four:

Rebuild your existing wardrobe.

This is the fun part, but it is also completely optional. Some people may feel as if a weight has been lifted and are happy with their recent purge. However, others may feel like they need to replace items they have gotten rid of.

Do your research and find out what staple pieces are missing from your wardrobe. Then, go shopping! Don’t forget, you don’t have to replace everything in just one shopping trip. Rebuilding a wardrobe takes time and money.