Warning: this is a rather girly post. If you aren’t into that, you’ll want to skip to a different read!

Back before you were your own boss, you knew how to put yourself together for work, and how that look was distinct from casual, glamour, and gardening duds.

Back in about 1983 I remember feeling extremely fashion forward when I participated in a 6 week “color draping” (remember that?!) and personal style class. I was positive I would never make another wrong clothing purchase and, more importantly, I would always look great. That served me well when I embarked on my post childbirth round of interviews and landed the perfect job in the town I really wanted to move to. My outfits were coordinated and I was confident.

Then, I changed marriages, jobs, and bodies.

When we are our own boss, our sense of style sometimes atrophies due to disuse. When there’s no dress code, or when you’ve maybe put on a few and outgrown your formerly fabulous investment clothing, getting dressed becomes the low point in your day. That’s no way to start your day!

Here’s some help.

We can all use a little Oprah. In the January, 2008 issue of “The Oprah Magazine,” there’s a great article on page 187 called “How Not to Look Old.” It is full of fantastic, manageable suggestions, including how to edit what you have.

Now, I know I can’t afford to hire a personal stylist to help me with this task (one of the tips), and I am not the sort to have a friend come over and go through my entire closet with me (another Oprah tip). But, until I read this article, I had never gotten beyond stuffing out of season t-shirts and tank tops into trash bags and shoving them under the bed.

Even so, I had a major breakthrough in my aproach to clothing management. I set aside a day (yes, that’s right, a whole day) to do the steps in this post and what comes next (in parts II and III of the series). Here are the steps I took:

• Examined everything in my closet and removed:
1. Everything out of season: it went into a different closet elsewhere in my house
2. Everything that hasn’t fit for a long time: it either went to charity OR got relocated to my sewing room if the fabric was fantastic; I like to sew and will probably make something else out of these pieces eventually, for myself or my grandkids.
3. Everything that is damaged
• Went through the damaged group and did one of the following:
1. Mended on the spot and put where it goes (out of season, outgrown, or back in closet)
2. Attacked any stains I thought I could really get out
3. Discarded things wrecked beyond repair
• Looked at what was left (and all the space!) and the categories I have things sorted in, rearranging by sleeveless, sleeved, jackets, skirts, pants, and dresses.

The immediate outcome was something like finding unused space in your home. And because I could really see the contents of my closet, I noticed some new potential combinations.

Are you talented with this process? I’d love to hear your tried-and-true suggestions. Meanwhile, here are some more resources for getting this first important part of your system underway:

Tips from other readers

Terri Orlowski:
“I have my “never wear, time to give away” pile, my “no one should ever wear this again (what was I thinking pile)”, my “if I lose 10 pounds, this will look great” pile, and everything else.”

Skyla Higgins:
“First I organize it, you can’t accomplish anything if you can’t even see half your clothes! I start by organizing everything by color, then within that color I put it in sleeveless/short sleeve/long sleeve order. As I am going through this process if I see something that I know for sure I won’t wear again I put it in a pile.

“Next comes the hard part, the “Will I ever wear this” or “I will wear this sometime right?” conversation we all have with ourselves. If these questions or something similar come about then toss it! Truth is if we haven’t worn it in the past year then we probably never will!

“Same process goes for jeans/pants, if they are way to small and you know that they probably won’t ever fit then toss them to the side. I organize jeans/pants by color and then the ones I like the best go on top of the stack on my shelf.

“Make a do not want/doesn’t fit/donate pile and a maybe pile. At the end of going through all your clothes go through the maybe pile again and really see if it is something you will wear.

“If you really have a hard time getting rid of it try it on and see if it actually still looks good. More times than not you will find that it just doesn’t fit like it used to.”

Dana Fortier:
“My style is a mix of classic and bohemian. I love well-fitting clothes in a classic style, but then I love odd mixes of colors and the danglier the jewelry - the better! I will often wear my black or chocolate pants with my tailored white shirt (v-neck, long sleeves, button front) with hand-made jewelry in accent colors (purple or green mostly). I am constantly reviewing my wardrobe and if I haven’t worn it in 3 months - it goes.”

Karin Wilson:
“If I didn’t go through and toss before I go shopping I do it before I hang the new stuff. First I get rid of anything not special that I haven’t worn in a year. And anything that really doesn’t fit, or won’t ever fit, gets tossed (that promise to myself about that extra 5 pounds is such a lie!).”

Amy:
“The only time I edit my closet and all the clothes I have in it, is to add something new. I hate getting rid of clothes even if I have never worn them. But when I finally take that step to part from all the “oh I will wear this…” pieces, I donate them to homeless shelters and thrift stores.”

Links to online resources:

Out of your closet: Find your personal style and edit your wardrobe

Minimize your Wardrobe, Save Your Sanity

Organizing Your Wardrobe: Getting Ready for Fall

How Does One Get the Polished Look?

(Allie’s blog, Wardrobe Oxygen, might be just what you need!)

Up Next, Part II: Scrutinizing/Updating what you are keeping will appear here on the evening of January 15, 2008.