The minute you open your closet do you see a pile of clothes, do you have to go through digging your closets and drawers, is finding your desired piece of t-shirt an uphill task, do you find yourself using the same set of clothes while others aren’t touched ever, ? If your answers are a yes, your wardrobe needs decluttering. Identify what you love now and what works best for you now, keep them and remove the rest.
Find out if you have clothes that you have had for years that you simply don’t wear anymore. Either they are uncomfortable because it does not fit your anymore or they don’t feel like you anymore. Take help of the points below to segregate what you want to keep and what you can remove from your wardrobe.
Rest of the clothes are for another purpose, they can be donated, given away or swapped with your friends and family, sold online or in a thrift market, upcycled, recycled or repurposed into some creative DIY's.
Donate
If the garments are in a good condition they can be passed down to the under privileged people. Garments are collected by different NGOs like Goonj and Safa to distribute to the people after a natural calamity like floods. Or you can identify an orphanage or an old age home to donate your clothes and see some faces light up with smiles.
Sell Your Clothes-
You can also sell your clothes online or to thrift stores. There are various online websites and apps in India, some of them are mentioned below-
Upcycle your clothes
If you are finding it hard to part with few pieces, here’s an alternative, give the clothes that you don’t wear anymore a new life by recreating, altering, accessorising and combining clothes in new ways. Turn your t-shirt to a tote bag or a pillowcase; turn the old saree into a skirt, artisan carpet, drape or a tablecloth. You can also use squares of scrap fabric (cotton or towelling) for making handy reusable upcycled kitchen cloths to mop up spills in place of paper kitchen towels or make-up remover pads – these can be washed and used again and again!
Recycle your clothes
There may be some clothes that you decide to discard and hence can send them for recycling. Earlier recycling of textiles was a domestic craft in India but currently there are textile clusters and small scale industries to work on second hand imported clothing and create a range of products like recycled yarns, doormats, prayer rugs, blankets and bed linen. The leftover garments are cut into square pieces to be sold as industrial wipers.
Most of the rejected garments from all across the world end up in Panipat for recycling, which is apparently Asia’s biggest textile recycling hub.
Commit to a weekly sweep
The more often you declutter, easier it will be for you to organise and upgrade your wardrobe. Pick a day in week; spend 10-15 minutes that day in rearranging, cleaning and organizing the wardrobe. This includes, ironing out wrinkled clothes, arranging clothes convenient for easy dressing and placing the clothing you didn’t wear the past few weeks into a box to be taken care of. This avoids piling in the wardrobe.
Here's how you can get started:
Clean out your wardrobe
A decluttered sustainable wardrobe is a collection of clothing you love, are comfortable with and wear often. Divide all the clothing in the wardrobe into three categories, one with clothes you always wear, your favourites; one with clothes you wear occasionally for special events; one with clothes you hardly wear (these are the ones you forgot you ever bought). Most often than not you will find the third pile is the biggest.
Shop consciously
Step one to shopping consciously is to avoid shopping with the mindset of “I might wear this someday”, and that someday may never come and it’s going to sit at the back of your closet. Buy clothing that will last long. Buy pieces of clothing that are easy to mix and match. With minimal number of pieces, you can improvise and come up with new outfits.
Decluttering gets much easier for you, when you think of it as deciding what to keep, rather than deciding, what to give away.
Time to rediscover your closet and say hello to your new wardrobe!
