What's hiding in your closet?
The emotional stories behind the clothes we keep and some thoughts on decluttering
For me, September is the real January.
I book the hairdresser, I plan ahead with a clear mind, the fashion month starts and I inevitably go through a certain type of wardrobe crisis. Fall is without any doubt my favourite season, and impatient to wear my boots and long coats again, I always try to do a little cleanout of my life and, wardrobe.
But no matter how many Septembers have been and gone, some things seem to have been lurking in my wardrobe since forever (and possibly watching me while I sleep). These relics seem to become increasingly hard to evict. And no, I am not talking about the essentials of my capsule wardrobe, (a term as overused as the word Brat). Even those essentials have changed with the times, along with my body, the vision I have of it and the cycle of trends. What I can’t seem to get rid of though, are the items I never actually wear. Those old worn-out pieces, almost in wrags, curled up in the darkest corners of my drawers.
Take for example, a specific Space Jam t-shirt given to me by my cousin when I was just eight years old. Everytime I see Bugs Bunny’s face on it, all wrinkled and faded due to the worn plastic print, I can almost hear him saying “What's up, Doc, isn’t it time to get rid of me?” And yet, it stays. From Italy to the UK, with every move I make, rest assured it will be packed. This old t-shirt is a token of those times in which just owning it made me so happy and cool.
If you find decluttering as hard as I do, you might be guilty of this too. I’m talking about that former boyfriend’s old sweater which you might have kept for way too long. Or maybe that necklace you wore during your entire high school years and that you still hold in your drawer in memory of those good ol’ times.
But why on earth do we cling to clothes we don’t even wear anymore? And why decluttering is such a difficult task?
To get to the bottom of this, I asked around to a bunch of lovely girls that I’m lucky enough to call friends (a big shout-out to them for being so amazing, I love you!) to see if they had a similar emotional attachment to their clothing too. Their replies not only made me feel less alone in this but also validated my beliefs in emotional dressing. Some even brought me to tears. I asked them which garments they hold onto, and why. I wanted to uncover the stories behind those items and explore what that says about our relationship with clothes. Here are a few of my favorite stories:
Rachel
“I have so many treasured garments it’s difficult to single out just one. I’m someone that is extremely emotionally intertwined with everything she owns, I have a story of connection for almost everything hanging in my closet and hidden in my drawers. And most stories are connected to my parents or grandmother. However, I think one of my most sentimental belongings in terms of clothes has to be an old t-shirt my mother used to wear when she was younger, precisely when me and my brother were small. The ribbing round the neck has become a bit loose and it has developed a few stains over time. But it’s in the perfect condition for the perfect purpose and that is using it to sleep in.
My mother probably doesn’t realise but some of my most cherished memories of being a little girl are imprinted on this t-shirt. First of all it’s fun (it shows a tropical forest and has monkeys on it, need I say more?), it’s colourful and it’s tactile. It has 3D crochet fruit, fruit patches and the parrots used to be rubbery and glittery. I can vividly remember laying in my mother’s arms while she chatted away on a summers evening, just feeling so at peace while playing with my mom’s t-shirt. She used to wear it right out of the shower after a long day at the beach. She would also let me wear it often as a dress which I used to absolutely love! It was like wearing my mother’s embrace without her even needing to touch me. Soft and delicate on the skin, but fun and colourful just like my mother has always been.
Wearing it now feels just like it did then. It makes me feel at home. I now wear it to sleep or to lounge in the house after a hot summer’s day. But only in the summer months, cause when autumn comes knocking at the door it goes right back in the box it came of out in June. The box of miscellaneous summer items that gets stored in the back of the wardrobe, ready for its next run. It’s just one of those items that I could never ever get rid of. It still has so many years of love left in it, and who knows maybe one day my children will be wearing it as a dress to fall asleep in, feeling just as safe curled up in it as I have all these years.”
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Inside Pocket to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.