Christa, Day 13: It's Hard to Imagine My Closet Getting Any More Edited

Who has two thumbs and had a banner Freecycling day? This guy. I passed along my little painted table - a truly grody piece of furniture I picked up during a housewarming party in Rhode Island when Tedd and I went for a walk around the neighborhood and then painted, a new cheese board set that was an oddly non-pertinent thank you gift from the contractor who renovated our bedroom, a spoon rest that was lovely but was doing not much other than taking up space on our counter until it started taking up space in my cabinet, and the nut grinder that was one of the presents we opened on our oh so sad Christmas morning of 2010.

But that's in the past. One day in the past, since we're talking about Day 12. Let's look at Day 13, shall we? 

Simplify your wardrobe. Is your closet bursting full? Are your drawers so stuffed they can’t close (I’m talking about dresser drawers here, not underwear). Simplify your wardrobe by getting rid of anything you don’t actually wear. Try creating a minimal wardrobe by focusing on simple styles and a few solid colors that all match each other. Read more.

Are my closets bursting? Ha, no. Finally, a day where I can roll out some expert cred. Not that I'm any kind of real expert, but I did study up on the capsule wardrobe concept in the early days of my employment - often because I had nothing else to do - and I've been making due with a limited work wardrobe since I started. In my non-professional life, I actually make even more dues (ha). Mostly because my uniform consists of black pieces, denim, and a handful of easy to wear jersey maxi dresses. For my pro wardrobe, I look at working with a limited selection a challenge. For my day-to-day wardrobe, it's about ease. And also looking fab in black.

Maybe I'm just deluding myself and everyone at work notices that I'm wearing the same 15 things over and over again, and my friends are all giggling about my limited black on black with black wardrobe, but my guess is no. When was the last time you noticed when someone had reworn an outfit? Possible never. I lay the blame on the media, which maintains that wearing an outfit more than once is a frugal choice and that every season must come with an updated, if not entirely new, closet full of clothing. My present-day style icon? Angelina Jolie. She keeps things classy, likes black as much as I do, doesn't go overboard with her hair or accessories, and frequently is photographed wearing outfit repeats, a favorite pair of shoes or shawl, or otherwise very simple clothing as compared to her Hollywood counterparts.

I consider her one of the few famous people who has accessible style. Maybe it's not everyone's style, but it's been a good primer for me - someone who up until a few years back was terrible with clothing.

So when I read something like the following pull from an article on The Punch, there's a part of me that says "Lucky!" and a part of me that says "Dodged that bullet!": Siegle reports that we buy nearly half our body weight in clothes a year, but more than 20 items hang in our wardrobes unworn. We also have four times as many clothes as we did in 1980.

What struck me about that pull was not all the shopping that must be going on around me, but rather the bit about 20 unworn items. I like to think of myself as pretty practical when it comes to clothing, but now I'm wondering if even I have 20 items that aren't getting worn (barring a few pieces of random formalwear that you can pry out of my cold, dead hands). Off the top of my head, there's a pair of pants that doesn't fit and probably never will because as much as I would like to be that thin, I like to be eating food more. And a t-shirt that is so soft but too silly for wearing outside of the home. Things like that.

Edit them, you say. Well, there's a problem. That weird t? I layer it in the winter. The tight pants will go in the donation box tomorrow, but for the most part the things I am not wearing now will see some play in the wintertime when I need to layer or lose my arms and legs to frostbite in his horrible climate. Mainly the things I am not wearing right now are not seeing any action because it's too warm, and being that my wardrobe is already so limited, I'm a bit afraid to do much editing other than getting rid of things that absolutely, positively do not and will not ever fit. Wouldn't want to have to restock when the cold sets in.