Conscientious Closet Purging

I have a fairly large closet and I have it packed to its seams.  In fact I am also using part of Jesse's closet and the guest bedroom closet.  Not too mention a few bins for off-season, or just can't part with clothes.  I know I have a problem.  In fact fast-fashion is my problem.  I am always wanting something new to wear, and justifying that if I don't spend a lot of money on it, it makes it okay.  It's not surprising either that fashion trends are continuously changing, so that if you want to stay on top of it, you constantly need to be buying new things.
I watched a documentary a year ago that really made me think about what we are doing.  It was called The True Cost, if you clink the link you can watch a preview of the documentary.  It is also currently available on Netflix.  If you enjoy buying clothes or just like fashion in general, I urge you to watch it.

It definitely made me think about how I don't need to constantly be buying clothes.  In fact this year I have made a promise to myself that I won't be buying any clothing for myself and trying to really think about the clothing I purchase for my children.

The documentary has also been stuck in my head as I think about what I want to get rid of in my closet.  It claims that most of our donated clothes get shipped to other countries and then what they don't want ends up in landfills.  When I think back to my trips to our local thrift stores looking for costumes, it makes sense that most of the donated clothing looks like it's from the 80's or 90's.  In other words, they seem to have plenty of stock that is extremely outdated.

So while purging my closet would most likely make me feel better in the short term, if I was going to get rid of clothing I would really like it to go to an organization that could use them.  While I don't have the perfect answer for this, we have donated in the past to women's shelters and are currently looking at taking our donations to a Kansas City homeless shelter.  I can tell you that in volunteering at a thrift store a few years ago, we would keep the best stuff to put out on the shelves and send the crappy stuff to the homeless shelters.  I think it would be nice to take the nice stuff to the homeless shelters, but I have no idea if they need it either.

I haven't been following the true Marie Kondo method of dumping all my clothes on the bed and then seeing what sparks joy.  Instead I have been slowly going through all the places I have clothes and being conscientious about what I keep or don't.  So I have begun amassing a pile of purged clothing that is living on the guest room bed.  I have started three piles.
1.  Pile to donate
2.  Pile to tailor
3.  Pile to think about

So let's look at a piece I went ahead and tailored today.  It all came from an inspiration photo I had saved awhile ago.

As I was trying on older pieces of clothing today, I came across this old black sweater.  It's definitely more than 10 years old when the style was more fitted.  Also as a side note - today is a snow/ice day and my kids are home.  Which means I haven't done any hair or makeup today.  Also I may have hired my 7 year old son to give me an honest opinion about whether I should keep things or get rid of them :-)

I figured this sweater would be a great piece to turn into the inspiration piece.  I attacked it with a pair of scissors cutting the side seams apart and then I took an old button down shirt of my husbands that was too small for him, and hacked off the top part.  It literally took me less than 5 minutes to sew the two shirts together....and here is the after.

Now if the kids could actually go to school, this would be the perfect outfit to wear for casual Fridays in the office.