Thursday, August 28, 2014

The Road to Hoarderdom

Every long weekend this year, I’ve planned to do a closet purge. It hasn’t happened yet. I’m not really optimistic about the upcoming weekend either. There are so many better things to do… like read Erin’sNaNoWriMo story, watch Netflix, play LoL with my brother, or get the rest of my stupid swimming miles. Not to mention sleeping in. I love me some sleep time.

Of course the assumption here is that everyone knows what I mean when I say closet purge. Quite simply, it means going through my clothes, which mainly reside in my closet, and getting rid of at least some of them. A good purge also involves reorganizing the remaining items, but I’m never that motivated. The last time I even got rid of something was for a clothing swap in May, which totally doesn’t count since I managed to leave the swap with more clothes than I started.

There are many reasons why one should regularly purge their closet. So far I’ve been very successful at coming up with solutions to avoid it. Don’t believe me? Alright, well here are a few reasons and what I consider perfectly adequate solutions:
Reason 1:  You can no longer close the drawers of your dresser.
Non-Closet-Purge Solution: Move clothes that would typically be in drawers to hangers. When this stops working, use the weird shelves in your closet. If that fails too, stop closing drawers. If you constantly leave certain ones open there’s more room.

Reason 2:  You run out of hangers.
NCP Solution: Omg so easy to handle, it’s laughable. For an instant fix double up certain items. You can almost always fit 2 dresses on a hanger. Buy more hangers the next time you’re at the store.

Reason 3: Nothing fits well.
NCP Solution: Buy more clothes, and then use solutions 1 & 2 to make room for them.

Reason 4: Seriously there’s no room in the dresser or closet.
NCP Solution: Don’t wash all your clothes at once. Always have some dirty so they can chill in the hamper. The next time you travel, leave some clothes in the suitcase. Start using other areas of the bedroom (desk, chair, bags from shopping) to store clothes. You can also buy plastic drawers to hold items like socks or camis.

So why closet purge when you have all these great solutions available to you??

Because apparently you’re drifting towards the “hoarder” line. One of my friends delicately mentioned at some point that I have hoarding tendencies when it comes to clothes. I thought she was joking. I’m starting to suspect she was not. For giggles, I decided to look up common signs of a hoarder. While I feel many have no relevance to me whatsoever, there were some that hit a little close to home. I texted said friend Jenn about it, and based on her comments decided maybe it would be a good idea to at least do a quick inventory of certain items.

At quick count, I currently own:
10 pairs of jeans (not counting the black ones)
47 pairs of socks
50 pairs of underwear
And 32 dresses

Those are the only items that are really grouped together, so that’s all the counting I’m willing to do. And when I say quick count, I mean counting the ones on hangers/in drawers. I wasn’t motivated enough to go through the hamper, suitcases, or bins of stored clothing in my closet. Or the stack of clothes on top of the bins in my closet. Almost forgot that existed.

Those are normal numbers, right? I mean sure I could go an entire month wearing only dresses alone and never need  to do laundry, but the thing is those are appropriate for different occasions, so I wouldn’t really do that.

The thing is, I hate getting rid of clothes. It’s impractical. So what if some of those jeans don’t fit? That means they don’t fit RIGHT NOW. It’s entirely possible that at any point I could gain/lose weight and then they’d fit again. Styles and opinions change all the time, so that shirt I don’t like today might be my new favorite next year. A dress is ripped entirely down one side? One of these days I might be motivated enough to take it to get fixed. It’ll happen.  Ok yes, it’s been a year since I ripped it, but motivation can come at any point!

This is why when I briefly kept a spreadsheet of what I wore on client visits I had trouble organizing it. There were too many options to make it easy to navigate. I completely understand Cher’s need for a computer program to track her clothes. Is it cheating if I try to get one of those instead of actually doing a closet purge? Nah.

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