New Year New You - A Lazy Girl's Guide On How to Spring Clean Your Wardrobe

 It's the beginning of another year. January 1st 2022 and your wardrobe is spilling out into all sorts of places that it shouldn't. Jumpers you've not worn in two years, jeans you haven't fitted into for 15 years and items in shopping bags with the labels still attached that you have never worn, guiltily shoved to the back of the wardrobe. And that is before I even get started on the coats that take up way too much room and the boots and shoes you can't bear to get rid of (even though they are so uncomfortable) because you have convinced yourself they are akin to art.

But it's January 1st, and even the TV is telling you you could do with a tidy up. Every week there seems to be another app from which you can sell your unwanted clothes/rubbish. Vinted, Depop, Shopify. 'Just snap a picture of your unwanted items, upload your pictures and the selling starts. It's that easy' the television offers. Can they see inside your house? you wonder. Even your own television seems to be quietly accusing you of having lost all control of your wardrobe. 

The truth is, there's something about a messy wardrobe that makes your life feel messy. Perhaps it's because it's the first thing you look at every morning - who wants a chaotic explosion of clothing - like Zara's rails after the first day of the summer sales - to be the first thing you see when you open your eyes? And why do so many of us seem unable to keep our wardrobes under control? Cheap consumer fashion certainly has a lot to answer for. Previous generations seemed to own far fewer clothes, that were far better quality. The backlash against cheap fast fashion and the waste it causes is already underway - consumers now are looking to create a more sustainable wardrobe. Great Britons alone send 700,000 tonnes of clothing to recycling centres, textile banks, clothes collections and to charity each year. That's enough to fill 459 Olympic-size swimming pools. 

So with a promise to myself to shop ethically henceforth, to buy myself a sewing machine to learn to upcycle my mass of unworn clothes, and to sell all my unworn and worn pieces that I no longer have a use for, I have put together a not too taxing (it's the 1st day of the year after all) way to give you wardrobe a mini spring clean that doesn't involve hiring one of those Trinny and Susannah types who come to your house for a thousand pounds and make you throw away all your favourite clothes. 

Whether you are someone who has read Marie Kondo's 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying' and live by it's message as if it were 'The Art of War' vs. mess, or whether you are someone who has managed to tune out the piles of clothes draped over that chair in your bedroom, you can always find a few new tips to help you declutter. Read on for some expert advice on how to navigate your winter wardrobe cleaning.

Make a Plan

All great plans start with a 'To Do' list in my life, and cleaning out your closet is no exception.  There's a certain comfort that comes of writing a list and ticking things off on said list, so this is a great way to start dealing with that Everest of clothes that is your wardrobe. Imagine your perfect closet space. How does it look? What's in it? How is it organised? Plot it all out before you tackle it in person. Once you know where you want everything to go, start kicking out things that don't fit your vision. Be ruthless. This is no time for emotion - you won't get rid of anything if everything you pick up to throw away reminds you of some incident in your life - 'I wore this dress on our first date', 'This was my favourite clubbing top when I was 18', 'I wore this jumper that day I saw Gerard Depardieu shopping in Topman Oxford Circus (true story)'. Detach all your emotions from the piece and look at it as what it is - a piece of material sewn together in a way that either fits you and looks good, or doesn't fit you and looks bad. Keep it or bin it on this basis. Unless of course it's your wedding dress, or a jumper your granny knitted with her own hands. You can keep those.

Edit Down

Spring Cleaning doesn't have to be done in the spring. In fact, you don't need to wait for any seasons to change to tackle your mountain of clothing. Purging can happen whenever you fancy. Packing to go away for a weekend? This can be a great time to have a look at what you've got and have a quick chuck-out while you're packing your cases. (I would recommend this only for those whose wardrobe purge isn't going to be the mammoth task that mine is. Who wants to start a huge job just before you go away for the weekend? This is for those who have a few bits too many, not a shop-full like myself).

Next step is to ask yourself that famed closet-cleaning question: 'Do you love it?' If you don't love it, why do you have it? Why is it taking up space? If it doesn't make you look hot-a-f anymore or it's not comfortable, why is it in your wardrobe/bedroom/house? If you're on the fence about an item, put it away for a period - say three months - and see if you miss it. Separation anxiety exists for clothes apparently.

Anything you've purged can go to charity or be sold. Avoid the temptation to store it in a black bag to go to charity or be sold. It will sit in said black bag in the corner of your room for the next year. This is no different to having it in your wardrobe. You are just moving the mess to another corner of your bedroom, only now it's in a bin liner. You need to get the clothes out of your house straight away.

Maximise Your Space

Review every drawer, shelf and wall space before deciding where you want things to go. Utilising overlooked areas — like the back of a door — will help you make the most of your space. Try not to put bulky stuff like jumpers and tracksuits in drawers - those plastic bags that you suck out all the air from and shrink your jumpers down to miniature-dog clothing size, work wonders.

Organise By Style, Then Colour

This is really showing off. If you manage to get to the stage where you've got all your jumpers organised by hue, then I really hate you - we have nothing in common and you shouldn't be reading my blog.

I'm kidding (a bit), the plan is to get your wardrobe to the stage where it is organised by style, colour and weather. For those who have a different weekday and weekend wardrobe, sort by use, keeping office wear and casual wear separate so it's easier to find.

Fold Your Jumpers

This is a tricky one. Jumpers shouldn't be on hangers as it ruins their shape. However, I've found that items laid out flat encourage the dreaded jumper munchers - moths. I don't have enough expletives in my vocabulary to truly express how much i hate moths. The pleasure I get from ending a moths life is quite visceral - I feel like Patrick Bateman after a particularly good kill. I recommend those plastic storage bags lined with lavender you can buy in John Lewis to keep them out. 

If you don't have a moth problem, you can stack your wool and cashmere in pretty colour coordinated piles that are both convenient and aesthetically pleasing. Whatever you do, if you're storing your knits in drawers, don't overstuff them. You'll ruin your clothes, break your drawers, and everything will end up a huge mess that you have to refold. Trust me on this one.

Hang Your Jeans

If you have a walk in closet or ample racks, then hark at you - aren't you lucky! But really - if you have either of these you should be hanging your jeans. Increased accessibility is the main reason for hanging your trousers. If however, your bedroom is the size of a walk in closet, shelves are second best alternative, You can also hang your favourites and put away your lesser worn items. For those poor unfortunates using drawers for trousers, vertical file folding (with the pocket side crease up) is the best storage method. Sort jeans by style and then by colour for easy selection.

If in Use Keep Boots On Lower Shelves

Boots take up a lot of space, so if a pair is gathering dust and not getting any street time, they should probably find a new home. Keep the ones you wear more often on a lower shelf and use boot stuffers to ensure they stay upright. Place any showstopping pairs on higher shelves, so you don't have to look at them and be reminded that you have barely worn them in two years and you hope your feet haven't become so fat from lockdown overeating that they don't fit anymore.

Maintenance Tips

We all have that one corner or chair that becomes our go-to deposit site for where you throw your worn clothes at the end of the night that aren't clean enough to go back in the wardrobe or dirty enough to go in the laundry basket. This corner/chair becomes a sort of Bermuda Triangle of clothes with one more wear before they are washed. This deposit site also harbours those outfits that don't come to fruition or the freshly-washed blouses that have yet to get hung up. The simple solution to this problem is to stop being so lazy and hang up your clothes.

I've opened a Vintage shop online - and I'm selling all my 90s treasures!

Ever since opening my online Vintage clothing and accessories shops on eBay and Depop, (camden.locker and camdenlocker respectively), I have noticed the huge nostalgia for all things 90s. Having been a teenager of the 90s myself, it's been handy to sell off all my old 90s clubwear and accessories to todays youth, who want an authentic piece of the real 90s in their wardrobe, rather than a reproduction. 

Personally, other than the fact I lived through those years, I hold no such desire to wear the clothes of the 90s again - the Buffalo boots and the wide-leg flares with tiny cropped tops; pinning my hair up in little butterfly clips like Geri Spice; the highly pigmented brown lipstick and pencil thin brows.  It's definitely not a look I hanker to return to in my 40s.

I am therefore happy to supply today's teenage somethings with all my old favourite pieces, and see them go off to a new home where someone else can enjoy them as much as I did. But it's been hard letting my old loved items go. A red silky snakeskin halter-neck top I bought in Portobello Market when I was 17 looks barely used even though I wore it over and over, and was practically fought over. I couldn't fit into it anymore, otherwise I'd have definitely kept it. It was a random brand I'd not heard of - Salem -  but whatever I'd seen in it all those years ago, clearly translated over the decades, and it ended up going to a girl who adored it - and who sent me a lovely message about how much she loved it. This made it much easier to let go.

The Salem top

I might sound like I'm being a little dramatic talking about 'letting go' of a piece of clothing like it's a pet, or an adored family heirloom, but for me, clothing can carry memories as much as any item we hold dear. This top took me on some amazing holidays, saw me through university, spent some epic nights out with me and received some fantastic compliments. It has stayed tucked away in my wardrobe for nearly thirty years, in the vain hope that I'll fit into it one day again. I guess I could have passed it on to family, but somehow having to look at it on someone else who I know is somehow worse. So letting it go to a stranger who loves it seems the next best thing. Otherwise I'd be keeping it forever, and lightening up my wardrobe has become a necessity. 

I am  - I will admit, a hoarder of the worst order. Maybe not the 'piling up old newspapers in the bath and storing plastic bags filled with junk you've picked up on the street in the kitchen sink' kind of hoarder. I've been in several hoarder's homes and it is the stuff horror films are made of. I don't want to be one of those people - living in a house full of old memories you can't let go of - that was depressing to even write.  But I do have a tendency to sentimentally attach memories to clothes and knick knacks in a way I have noticed others do not. Not being able to throw away a pair of trousers I will never again wear, because I wore them to a party I remember having fun at, or not being able to burn a candle that was given to me by a friend 30 years ago because, well, it's a candle and would disappear once i'd used it, is maybe not in the 'crazy hoarder' category' but it's swinging in the same ballpark. 

I still think about a keyring I threw away one time when I decided to have a clearout and throw away anything that was broken. This particular keyring was from the 80s - a blue plastic rollerskate with yellow wheels. I can remember buying it - I was walking home from Saturday school with my dad, and he took me into a toyshop come newsagents in Kentish Town. I remember choosing it, choosing the colour and wearing it on my bag (I didn't own keys yet). But twenty years later, one of the wheels was missing, and that day when I did that clearout, I was feeling particularly ruthless, and threw that keyring away. And I still think about it to this day. Then there was the time I overgenerously gave away my favourite oversized 90s Levis jeans jacket to a cousin. It was the noughties, and oversized jeans jackets were not the rage anymore - slim fit skinny ones were. He'd come to London and went to Camden Market looking for the perfect jean jacket. When he couldn't find one, I immediately thought of the one in my wardrobe. The one I'd worn through the 90s and adored, but which wasn't quite fashionable at the time. It fitted his bulkier frame perfectly. But a few yeasrs ago, when oversized jean jackets came back in, i thought of that jacket. I even looked for it, thinking that maybe I'd dreamt giving it away. I hadn't. I hope he bloody loved that jacket. I still think about it. I wonder if he passed it on to his daughter to wear. Or if he threw it out (shudder).

So the fear of making mistakes like this again made me go through a period of literally throwing nothing away. Nothing. Or very little. Even when one Christmas, someone bought me a copy of 'Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, and I managed to do a massive declutter - 6 bin bags and several boxes went to charity -  but it didn't even touch the sides.  Now my home resembles a cross between the Stables Market in Camden, with all it's old trinkets and vintage clothes and an homage to everything I've ever done, seen, known or loved since 1985. 

The Christmas present

My friend Amy has a technique to avoid clutter. She has one of everything, and If she buys something new, she will throw away whatever it is it has replaced. If she buys a new handbag, she throws her old one away. Buys a new laptop, throws the old one away. This is clever. But the problem is, what if you're the type of person who buys something when you're old vresion of that thing is still ok? What if you're the kind of person who wants more than one black handbag? Amy's technique only works for those who have a minimalist mindset. I have at least 50 pairs of black jeans. At least. I am clearly not an Amy.

What I dream of, is a minimlaist Swedish clutter free house - airy and light like a spring cloud. All white and wooden with marble surfaces. maybe a duck egg blue here or there or a light grey. There are fresh blossom somewhere in this dream. Most of all, there are free surfaces. I dream of surfaces - empty,  clutter-free, - but for a quirky vase, a white one, ceramic, with a couple of eucalyptus branches stuck in it for that 'Vogue living' look you see in magazines. I dream of space. I have no space. I dream of space where I can roll out a yoga mat in my bedroom and freely fling myself about pretending to be a warrior or a tree. I want to be able to salute the sun without knocking over a vase and a porcelain Bambi whose tail doubles up as a ring holder. The gulf between the two types of living space the cramped and cluttered and the airy and roomy - what i have and what i want - is vast. Something had to give.

'Just chuck it all' a friend of mine said over coffee yesterday. "If you don't need it and you don't wear it  - especially if you haven't worn it in twenty years, just get rid of it'. I know he is right in a way. But seeing all my old memories end up in landfill is not the answer.  It's not right for my head - I'll just end up thinking about it like I still think about that rollerskate keyring. Nor is it environmentally the right thing to do. The amount of clothes in landfill - well, that's a whole other article. So selling it on to someone else who will love it as much as I did or do, and make their own memories in it the way I did, seems to me the best compromise. 

Originally, when I first thought about writing this piece, it was going to be about how people who've had their teenage years in an era (mine in the 90s for instance) tend not to dive into that trend when it comes round for a second time. I remember talking to a friend who grew up in the 70s, telling me they'd never wear flares again (this was after they'd come round for the first time in the 90s) as they were there the first time round and were there when they lost their cool in the 80s. They'd been there and done it the first time round and it felt weird to do it again - to go back to your youth in that way. And that's what I inteded to write about. How I couldn't do the 90s again as I'd already done them, and how it would seem weird to revisit my youth in that way. But it turned into more of a piece on nostalgia itself, and time passing, and having to let things go. 

I can't keep all my stuff - and clothes, i've discovred don't keep well. Moths are little shits. They have no care for sentimentality - and no respect for expense either - the flying, egg laying eating machines tend to go for your priciest stuff - your silks and your cashmeres. They will munch through your Alexander McQueens and leave the Topshops which are stored in the same bag. That's just vindictive if you're asking me. It's like they know. And then there's the problems brought on by materials ageing. White's turn yellow, leather crumbles and goes sticky, shoes fall apart, and don't get me started on the little holes that appear from nowhere. Where do they come from??

The Miss Sixty vest

So if you're interested in some great 90s pieces, worn with love and handed on with the hope that you'll love them too, have a look at my shop. There's a Miss Sixty top that's causing a small furore. It's mad cute, and I love it even now. But I'll never fit into it again. I'll never again wear it with those black flarey trousers I always wore with it and my buffalo boots or my Adidas shelltoes. Someone else can though. Ahhhh my Buffalo boots. Original 90s Spice girl boots. Not touched since 1998. Still in their original box. They're staying with me. For now.