Soul & Oak: Spring 2015 Capsule Wardrobe

It has taken me a bit after the Memorial Day Weekend to get back into the groove of blogging. But I promised to document The Purge for my Spring 2015 Capsule Wardrobe from last Friday so here are the steps I took.

1) I started going through my wardrobe and pulling out things I just knew I needed to get rid of. There wasn't much as I had already done this not too long ago when we dealt with the Great Mold Migration of 2015 that took over our house.

2) I then pulled out a few things that I wasn't sure about to put into a pile of maybes. I would try them on later.

3) I pulled out all things not Spring related. This was a bit hard as most things in California could be related to all seasons. There were very few that got pulled right away into a pile to deal with later when Fall and Winter came around but not much. I could've been much more comprehensive in this step and have actually gone through these clothes as well but I wasn't in the mood to spend a whole lot of time on it so I figured it will be a nice do-able project if I deal with purging season by season. Also, I left out all my coats because as I mentioned in the previous post, I was not counting my coats as part of the 37. This was true for camping related outfits as well that may ordinarily fall under Fall/Winter.

Fall/Winter Clothes Pile

4) Next, I found my 37. I first just picked out my go to items that I knew I wouldn't be able to live without. This included basically all of my pants which are mostly all Gap skinny jeans in various colors. At first I was afraid keeping the majority of my jeans would hurt my overall balance but when I got everything together, I realized I still had a few items to pick so I threw back in some sweaters and shirts that I was sad to store away. Especially my favorite mustard cardigan that although it's color is very autumnal, it is my favorite all year long.

So instead of making my procedure 4 a huge paragraph, I will bullet point some revelations, frustrations, etc. that came along with finalizing my number 37.

First, I'm doing this in May so the fact that I'm putting stuff away only to bring it out early June again for Summer didn't make it so hard. I knew I only had to say goodbye to some things for a bit.
I didn't feel like spending a bunch of time putting together intentional outfits from my final 37 so I kinda just threw it together from my faves. I already have some insight to how this is working out that you can read in my next post.
Shoes were hard and I originally wasn't sure what I was going to do as far as counting them. I ultimately didn't make too much of a decision. As you can see from the picture, I put 5 shoes in my 37 but I still have like 3 pairs of tennis shoes out for sports. I also still have a box under my bed of high heels because even though I never wear them, I can't get rid of them in case I finally have a reason to wear high heels. Within that box I also kept a lot of other shoes I'm not ready to give away yet as well as my Tom's which are my go to shoes for heading out the door to yoga or pilates.
Some things got moved into my non-counting workout pile but rightfully so, and I created also a non-counting basics pile of leggings and tank tops worn under shirts. The only thing I feel guilty in putting in there is a long sleeved plain green Gap shirt because I do wear it a lot but I don't feel it's outfit oriented.
I know one basic rule of getting rid of something is that if you have something else that serves the same function, get rid of it. Well I have tons of white-ish tank tops in the basics pile as well as a lot of other redundant things I kept in certain piles. Why do I need all these? Who knows? But I wasn't ready to give them up yet but maybe, eventually as I do this project I will be more aware of what I just don't wear and will eventually be able to get rid of the redundancies and add things like basics into my 37.

This here is the final product. I used this website called photovisi.com to create the collage and I didn't love it. It was weird to work with and it changed the color a bit but just on one item. That one skirt that looks all psychedelic is just a train conductor stripe. So needless to say I need to find an alternative but it does the trick for this time. And also excuse the random red pants on the shoe image as it somehow got missed in the first collage.

As you can see of my 37 (and actually I realized while doing this I ended up with 36 - ha, I've always been great at math!), I ended up with the following numbers.

T-shirts & Tanks - 11

Sweaters & Cardigans - 6

Skirts - 2

Dresses - 2

Pants - 7

Shorts - 3

Shoes - 5

The last and final step was to finally go through that pile I had put away as maybes. They weren't necessarily maybes for Spring but maybes to consider getting rid of. I was kind of disappointed to find that I wanted to keep most of them. The funny thing with me is that I will try something on that I have the hardest time working into an outfit, but once it is on I realize how cute it is and I can't get rid of it. So I put what was summery of this pile into the bin to go through in a few weeks and plan to replace some of my favorite tried and trues with some of the ones that I for some reason always avoid.

Summer Clothes - Coming Soon

It made me realize that apart from creating more intentional outfits that fit my style, this project can help get rid of things through a process of elimination by creating less choices. Basically, if I put one of these items that I think is so cute but never wear into my summer wardrobe I will be challenging myself to switch things up and wear different things. If for some reason I don't rise up to the challenge and just never wear this item in a season when all I have is 37 things to choose from, then it should be pretty obvious it is ready to go at the end of that season. In this way I will probably end up getting rid of more at the end of the season rather than the beginning.

About a week of completing my capsule wardrobe I already have so many thoughts on how it's going but I will save those for next week. The last thing I wanted to report here is that there are a few more things I didn't do that is part of the traditional capsule wardrobe.

The first is, as you can see on Caroline Rector's www.un-fancy.com, she suggests to get nice wooden hangers to hang everything on so everything looks organized and pretty. Most blogs I've seen where people have followed capsule wardrobes, they will to get the wooden hangers. I couldn't justify buying wooden hangers even though I have perfectly good hangers albeit of different materials and colors. I thought that would be both a waste of time and money. I do agree that it looks nice but eh!

And the second is, the capsule wardrobe procedures usually have you look at what you chose and see what is missing. Then you go shopping for intended items of good quality at the beginning of the season to obtain it and add it to your 37. So you only shop 4 times a year. Well, I don't feel I have the means right now to do a big shopping spree. I have already come up with some essential items that I want and plan to buy one by one over the coming months. How they get added as they are purchased, well, I'm not sure. Maybe they will replace something in the wardrobe mid-season or maybe they will get stored to come out for their more appropriate season. It's a good idea in concept and maybe when I'm more in the hang of doing this it could work out for me but for now, I'm just going to purchase things slowly.

More pics to enjoy: