Every single hanger came out of my closet last Saturday morning. By 9:30 the bed was covered, Harper was sitting cross-legged on the floor ranking things, and Moose had claimed a pile of sweaters as his new bed. I'd been putting this off since February. Spring is when a closet tells the truth: the coat and the heavy sweaters move to the back, and you can finally see what you've actually been wearing.
I count my work clothes, which I know is a little much. Last April I had 24 pieces. This April there were 28 on the rail, not counting the coat: two summer additions, a rust sweater in the fall and a charcoal one in January. I made three piles on the bed: keep, consignment and done.
What went out
- The green print dress from TJ Maxx. I paid $22 last summer to have it altered and have worn it twice since. Time for someone else to try.
- The black knit blazer from J.Crew Factory. Fine in theory, but the navy blazer won every single morning. I count maybe five wears in two years.
- A print blouse from LOFT that I loved in the fitting room and never once reached for at 6:30 a.m.
- Dark jeans from Kohl's that never fit right after the first wash.
I took all four to a consignment shop in Huntsville on Tuesday after work. They took three and passed on the jeans, which went to the donation bin instead. Two pieces have sold so far, and my share is $27. That's not a windfall, but it's $27 more than they were earning in my closet.
Three more pieces were simply done, and they were my three most-worn pieces, which tells you something. The black ankle pants from LOFT, bought in early 2024 for $45, had gone shiny at the knees. By my rough count I wore them around 200 times, which works out to about 23 cents a wear. The white and black Uniqlo tees had gotten thin enough to be a problem under office lights. All three went to the textile bin.
That's the lesson I keep relearning. The things that wear out first are the things that work, and I should plan to replace them before they look tired instead of after.
What I kept
Everything else stayed, 21 pieces in all. The navy blazer, still the hardest-working thing I own. The gray trousers with the $14 hem. Both cardigans, including the gray one that lives in my desk drawer and came home just for this. The navy linen-blend pants from last summer, which wrinkle in the car and which I'll wear anyway. The black wrap dress that went to the holiday party. The olive chinos, which are home pants now and perfectly good at it.
From the HR side: I used to see people come to work dressed for the job they had three jobs ago, and it usually wasn't about money. They just hadn't pulled everything out and looked in a while. Once a year, on a Saturday morning, seems to be about right for me.
The five pieces I bought for $180
| Piece | Where | Paid | Replaces |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black ankle pants | LOFT | $50 | The 2024 pair |
| White knit tee | Uniqlo | $15 | The thin one |
| Black knit tee | Uniqlo | $15 | The other thin one |
| Blue striped button-down | Banana Republic Factory | $42 | The print blouse |
| Navy shirtdress | Nordstrom Rack | $58 | The green dress |
| Total | $180 |
The pants were $5 more than last time for what looks like the same pair. I bought them anyway, because I already know exactly how they hold up. The shirtdress is the one real addition: cotton, a belt I can skip, long enough for the conference room and cool enough for the parking lot in July. Harper ranked it first. She called the striped shirt "very teacher," which I've chosen to hear as a compliment.
The closet is at 26 pieces now, and the hangers still slide. With the $40 sweater in January, I'm at $220 of my roughly $600 workwear line for the year, and the coat was already paid for last fall.
