{ Spring Cleaning, Wardrobe Edition }

:: tulips Mike gave me last month, just because ::

 

Whenever I take my clothes to the consignment store and most of them are rejected...which is every single time...I'm torn between two conflicting emotions.

Should I be relieved that I'm getting rid of the "right" items--clothes that are definitely out of style--which is proved by the fact that they are not cute/trendy/etc. enough to be sold at a consignment store?

Or should I be mortified that I've been wearing clothes so frumpy and out of the loop that a consignment shop won't even attempt to sell them?

Which is it???

Ages and ages ago I stumbled across The Tiny Twig and her e-book, The No Brainer Wardrobe: Get Dressed with More Confidence and Less Fuss. I wanted it, but it wasn't until last week that I ran across her site again and spontaneously bought the e-book.

Perhaps it's that spring is in the air. Perhaps it's the fact that I haven't had a good purge in a long time {it's much harder to indulge in one's OCD idiosyncrasies when parenting an infant}. Maybe it's that over the past few months, I've noticed that I wear the same things over and over and over again. {This isn't bad, because I generally look good in the clothes I wear repeatedly, but it's been niggling at me that my closet is full of clothes I haven't worn in years--and not just because I was pregnant last year.} Maybe it's because I'm the same size I was pre-pregnancy, but I'm definitely not the same shape--my ribcage and hips appear to have permanently expanded, for example--and everything fits a little differently. Whatever the impetus, here I am, about a quarter of the way through The No Brainer Wardrobe, and I just took four paper grocery sacks full of clothes to the consignment store.

Three of them were rejected as un-sell-able.

Three!!!

That means 75% of my cast-offs were too ugly for the consignment store!!

What really shocks me, though, is how a lot of the clothes in those sacks made it through multiple wardrobe purges in the past. I can think of four items off the top of my head that I have worn one time each. One of those times was eleven years ago, and two of the others were about eight years ago. Sheesh! I've let guilt {I spent a lot of money on that or This was a gift} keep a lot of things I don't like and don't wear in my closet for years. Part of the "problem" is that I haven't changed sizes since I was about 14 years old; clothes that I no longer wear still fit, and I feel guilty for getting rid of them. And then there are the clothes I've loved and worn so much that they are getting tattered, but not quite dead yet, so I feel bad throwing them away, even though I don't wear them anymore because they are raggedy.

The great part--Mike especially will agree with this--is that there is very little, if anything, I need to buy. Isn't that crazy?! With all those unworn clothes removed from circulation, there still aren't really any gaps in my wardrobe. It's simply that the clothes I actually wear, the ones that look good on me and make me feel good, are no longer surrounded by lots and lots of clothes that I don't wear, that don't look good on me. I still have plenty of wardrobe. Maybe now getting dressed in the morning will be easier: I have a lot fewer choices, and I know that the options I do have are all ones I like.

So I'm okay with the consignment people not wanting my unworn clothes. I don't want them, either!

Have you got spring fever this year? What are you itching to do?