I Only Wore My Neglected Clothes for a Week — Here’s What I Ended Up Decluttering (I’m Surprised!)

If you’re anything like me you have clothes in your closet that you don’t wear, but also don’t want to declutter. They are either too nice or were too expensive at the time, or you feel you haven’t really given them a chance yet, so they stay living on their hanger season after season untouched.

A number of years ago I made up a method to try to help myself combat this and my ever-accumulating pile of “maybes” that gathered during decluttering sessions. I would take a box, fill it with everything I don’t wear, and then make myself wear those items over the coming days. This helped me to decide how I felt in the clothes, as well as if I could see myself ever wearing them again.

Recently I gave this decluttering challenge a try with an assortment of clothing I don’t reach for anymore. Here’s how it went.

I began the challenge by looking in my wardrobe and drawers for any clothing I felt I didn’t wear often or at all. If you wish, you can just include outdoor clothing in this challenge, but I decided to also include pajamas to double down on my decluttering.

Without thinking too much into it, I took out any items that I can’t remember wearing and gathered them together in a box. This then left my closet and drawers filled with my usual go-tos, as well as clothing only worn for special occasions (these items will be worn less often typically, but there’s a reason for it!).

For the next week onward I wore items of clothing from this box, supplemented with others from my closet and drawers if necessary. If, for instance, you haven’t got a pair of pants you don’t wear but you have lots of shirts, you may want to make them into an outfit. What matters is that whatever outfit you end up with, it includes items you don’t normally reach for.

I honestly had a lot of fun working through the challenge. Going out in new outfits felt refreshing and as though I was shopping from my own wardrobe. At times when I pieced items together I realized I really didn’t know the best way to style them or that I didn’t own other pieces that looked good with them. But it was all part of the process and helped me to decide what to keep and what I felt truly suited me.

This is a fun challenge that I would recommend to anyone, whether they wish to try it alone or with family and friends. By the end of the challenge a few pieces I never usually wore grew on me, but for the most part it highlighted just why my go-to clothing pieces were such staples in my wardrobe, be it because of their comfort, style, or how they made me feel when I wore them.

By wearing clothing you don’t usually wear you learn a lot about yourself and how different clothing pieces can affect the way you feel. So, if you have items in your life that you don’t tend to wear, I’d definitely give this a try.