The Wardrobe Project: Falling Down the Rabbit Hole

So last night (you'll notice all the pictures with the flash taken at night) I officially started The Wardrobe Project.

I started by taking stock of all the places in the house where I keep clothes.
Here they are in all their not so glorious glory:

You remember my closet from yesterday's post (this is in our second bedroom on the main floor which happens to act as my dressing room). This is the everyday closet. Stuff I like to keep out "just-in-case" and stuff I wear regularly:

Here is the closet in the third bedroom on the main floor (which is occupied by The Boy's RC hobby supplies. This closet has off-season clothes (including coats) hung in it. I also keep my collection of vintage that I do not wear regularly in here, such as vintage cocktail dresses and furs. I also keep costumes hung up in this closet:

This is the front hall closet. This holds the usual stuff: coats, shoes, boots, hats, mitts etc...:

Here is the pile of clothes in the bedroom that are usually left beside my side of the bed (or in this case on top of Dave's kennel). This is a collection of what I have worn after work in the past few days. It regularly gets taken back to the dressing room (I somehow can never remember to get UN-dressed in that room. ha!). It's usually a collection of jeans and t-shirts:

Here is the drying rack in the laundry room which houses things which sometimes never make it upstairs (nevermind on hangers):

And last but not least is the rack of vintage clothes I have in the basement which I am amassing to start selling on etsy or consign next year. All of which will not count towards The Wardrobe Project, but I wanted to show you how many clothes are really in this house. I had to buy an extra clothing rack to accomodate them(The Boy has all of his things in the master bedroom closet for those who are wondering) :

Plus this bag of summer shoes I tossed down there last week:

So that's all of my dirty (and not so dirty) laundry.


And so the editing begun. I started with my favorite clothing item! Dresses!

I emptied the drying rack from the basement (well see how long I can go without it!) and brought it upstairs to begin my sorting. I gathered all of my dresses onto the rack. This actually stressed me out a little as I knew I was going to force myself to part with some of them. I stopped thinking about it for a moment and started to count.

Here are the totals after I finished sorting and counting:

Total Number of Dresses: 67
Total Number of Vintage Dresses: 42
Total Number of Vintage Dresses Worn: 22
Total Number of Dresses Worn (including modern): 44

Which Leaves:
23 Dresses Owned and Never Worn

I felt not bad after I counted everything. I have worn at least 2/3 of my dresses! Go Me! I have worn all but one of the modern dresses I've bought. It was really some of the older vintage dresses that I have never worn. Ones which I keep because I think they're pretty. Like this one:

So then the tough part started. The Editing.

This was so hard!!!! In my usual habit I rationalized every dress!

Here is one of the highlights (lowlights?!):

This is the only modern dress I have bought that I've never worn. And that is only because the strap broke on it the first time I tried to put it on. I've owned it for almost 8 years and have never fixed it. This admission depresses me.
The worst part is, I thought this one would be a no-brainer: Never worn: TOSS!
NOPE! When I hung it up to take the picture I had a good look at it and thought "this dress is so cute! With tights and a belt! I could totally fix the strap! It's silk for godsake and 90's grunge is coming back!"
I am so dumb.
It's in a "Repair" pile as we speak. (But on a bright note I am second guessing that decision as I type this).
THIS IS WHY I CAN'T GET RID OF ANYTHING PEOPLE! I AM INSANE!!!

OK. So I know you're all asking yourselves how many dresses did I actually get rid of?

Well this is a truly sad admission: 5 total. Yup. 5. Out of 67.

HELLO MY NAME IS LISA AND I AM A DRESS-AHOLIC (clothes-aholic?!)!

This is how it went down:
1 very damaged dress was thrown out (after I salvaged some trim off of it)
2 vintage dresses went down to the sell rack in the basement
2 dresses went in the give-away pile.

That's it.

This leaves me with 3 remaining Dress catagories (as I see it):

1. Dresses I wear regularly
2. Dresses with sentimental value (like my grad dress and a few my grandma gave me) + amazing vintage dresses I consider part of my collection.
3. Drsses I want to mend/repair (like the silk "grunge" dress). Which I have given myself a timeline for. If they're not completely repaired and ready to wear in a month I am getting rid of them. (it was the only way I could do it!)

So it was a bit of a dissapointing, slow start. I thought in the beginning that dresses would be a good place to start, but I think they're in fact too close to my heart. Now that I think about it, I'm more attached to my dresses than any other clothing item in my closet.
Maybe I'll come back to them after some practice on other things.

At any rate (sorry for the long post!!), I will systematically go through every piece of clothing. I'm hoping to tally up the numbers and see where I land at the end for fun!

I've also had a few emails/comments that a few of you would like to join me! Welcome! Let me know how you're doing!

Tonight I'm working on t-shirts, camisols and tank tops. Hopefully it'll be a bit easier.

Lisa.xo