This Is What Happened When I Only Wore 24 Items For An Entire Month

Oct 20

I stumbled upon these articles along my minimalism journey about women that wear what’s called a capsule wardrobe where they just have a few main staples in their closet and thought…. that’s insane! There’s no way I could nor want to do that! Why would you want to do that to yourself? That seems incredibly extreme, but when you think about it, it’s not so crazy. I decided to give it try for one month to see how I would fare. To be honest, I didn’t think I would last one week, but these were the surprising results!

Why Did I Want To Try It?

September is typically the time where I splurge on clothes. I love Sweater Weather but I trying to be more intentional on my spending and utilizing what I already have. Instead of spending money on clothes I didn’t need, I saved up for a new living room rug that I’ve been wanting to replace for months! So I turned inside my closet to see what I had in there and wanted to see if I could create a fun work wardrobe out my staples and a pretty color palette instead of searching for instant gratification in a store or adding to a cart online shopping.

I also wanted to demonstrate to our seller clients that you could make your existing closet space look amazing for potential buyers by significantly reducing the amount of stuff you had in there and still be able to continue living with an awesome wardrobe that you love.

This Is What Came Of It!

I narrowed my wardrobe to 24 items… FOR REAL. For most of you in panic mode just reading that sentence… don’t worry, I did too! Now this is super extreme, but just by editing the clothes you honestly truly love, fits you like a glove, and you feel comfortable and confident in is really the only clothes you need in your repertoire. We are conditioned to think that we need 100’s of items to have a legit stylish wardrobe, when all you really need is enough to get you through your laundry cycle!
I never got bored all month. In fact, I think I became more creative with the ways I wore my pieces and never wore the same outfit more than once, which I really wanted to! I started to like my clothes even more than I had before and put outfits together that I would have never have thought of styling together!
It took me way less time to get ready in the morning. Why? Less choices and distractions enabled me to focus and hone in on what I wanted to wear. It’s like when you go to the ice cream shop and they have hundreds of flavours, and you take forever making a choice (and you probably still default to your go-to favourite anyway). When your closet gets so full with choices, your brain can’t compute the 1000’s of combinations that you can put together, which leaves clothes forgotten about or you get frustrated and think… “I have nothing to wear!” It actually helped when my clothes had space to breathe, sort of speak. I was able to visually see everything in front of me and I loved everything in there. It cut my regular morning try-on sessions down to 3 minutes vs. the normal 15.
I was incredibly surprised by the number of outfits I could make with just the 24 items of clothes. But if you think about it… it you have 3 t-shirts, and 3 pairs of jeans, that’s 9 outfits right there. Not to mention adding layers, jackets, and cardigans in the mix. I probably could of gone another month without wearing the same thing twice! This has now made me incredibly aware of the fact that I don’t need a tonne of clothes to feel secure about having a wardrobe that I love.
Laundry was not an issue, which was a bit of a shocker to me. It was the same as normal, which, when you think about it, you only wear 20% of your clothes anyway, so it didn’t impact my laundry cycle. There was a little bit of a panic when I spilt carrot soup on my white and navy dress, but it came out thanks to a Tide-To-Go pen.

It was a fun experiment for me to really hone in what I love about my wardrobe. I know that the pieces I missed wearing were well worth returning back into my closet. My creativity putting outfits together has heightened and I’m able to utilize pieces that I didn’t wear as much in a whole different way. It actually got me excited about my clothes again, which I think is the biggest lesson I learnt. When you feel bored or feel like you have nothing to wear, the best advice I can give is to edit your closet instead of going out and buying more stuff!

Editing Your Closet Is Perfect For Those:

that feel overwhelmed and frustrated with your clothing
want to trim down your morning routine and improve your focus and decision making when you are getting ready
want to spend money more intentionally and want to stop buying shit you don’t need
looking to list your property and need to showcase the storage abilities of your closet space

If you want help organizing your closet, I’m available to help! Take a look at my Closet Cleanse session and see if it’s something you could benefit from!

I’m not much of an OOTD kind of girl… but here are 30 outfits I made for September using 24 items of clothes.