State of the Closet

If I was a cleverer more experienced blogger, I would have timed this post to coincide with the POTUS's State of the Union (get it, State of the Closet . . . State of the Union.  Don't judge me too harshly.  I've lived in DC waaaay to long).  But, moving on.

It turns out that one person can accumulate a lot, (I mean a massive amount) of clothes that they don't wear/know about over a 27-year life span.  I won't pretend that I have finished logging everything I own.  For starters about a third of my wardrobe is in storage.  It's mostly summer things, but that probably should have been the first indication I have too many clothes.

So far, I've collected data on 58 items and that's probably (rough guess) about half of what I currently have in my closet, excluding shoes, pajamas, things like belts, and *ahem* delicates.  Since the criteria for my "model" closet is that it meets my needs for a professional wardrobe, I decided to start with my work clothes and go from there.  While I don't have enough to draw any real conclusions, I am seeing some interesting things:

• I have waaaaaay more bottoms than tops.  So far I've counted about 9 pairs of pants and 14 skirts and only have 11 blouses logged.  Granted I haven't finished listing all my tops, but right now that's more than double the amount of bottoms to tops.
• I don't need to buy new jeans anytime soon.  Right now I have 10 pairs.  But, when I think about it, I only really wear 4 or 5 of them on a regular basis.  And, most of the time, I live in one of my two pairs of AG jeans.
• On that note, I could probably lay off stocking up on work dresses.  Right now I have 7 that are purely for work and I'm guessing I have a lot more in my summer storage box.

Probably the most surprising thing for me was the number of pants and skirts (14?!?!?!) that I have.  Maybe it's because I've had problems finding pants and skirts that I feel good in so when I find some I like, I jump on them.  I also noticed several items that I don't remember wearing in the past year, so I should probably decide whether or not to donate them.   And, I'm definitely donating some of those jeans . . .