Look at that! Progress is being made! No longer a mountainous heap, but nice tidy stacks, all colour-co-ordinated. At the top there you can see a Dylon colour chart. Once I’d sorted everything out according to which tops went with which colour of chinos, it was very easy to see where the gaps were. Dyeing the pale blue trousers dark grey will mean they go with almost all of my existing tops, and stand a lot more chance of actually being worn! And dyeing the beige pair dark brown means I can throw out an ancient pair of cord trousers that my sister gave to me years ago. I bought the dye this morning, along with a (hopefully nice) “Rosewood Red” packet. I’ll use that to dye my cream yoga pants (which also never get worn), and a t-shirt to go with the new brown trousers. The boxes of dye cost about £6 each, and whilst it does feel a bit weird to completely alter two pairs of brand new trousers (I usually only over-dye worn out jeans), it’ll make a huge difference to my wardrobe.
The wardrobe, which now looks like this! Well, almost like this. I did a bit of a swap, and all of Paul’s t-shirts are all now on plastic hangers, so I could put all of my clothes on wooden ones. I think they’re much nicer and Paul doesn’t care, so that worked out nicely!
The top rail is now organised by colour. Each pair of chinos is accompanied by its matching shirts and t-shirts on those multiple-hanger-thingybobs. They keep each group together and save so much space in the wardrobe, so that’s a win-win! The bottom rail has all of my “neutral” tops – black, white and grey shirts, t-shirts and all those H&M jumpers.
On the right, the top two cubbyholes are things I don’t wear for work. T-shirts with cartoons on them, and jumpers that are comfortable rather than smart. The cubbyhole with all the extra space in it is for yoga pants and leggings. That’s a section that needs adding to, I think.
And in the bottom square, jumpers that I can wear for work, including two chunky cardigans that I was going to unravel because they didn’t go with anything. (The green one, and the pink & orange.) I’m very glad I didn’t take them apart now! That section actually needs adding to as well. The sooner I can finish knitting my yellow cardigan the better – it turns out to go with almost all of the trousers, which is quite exciting as I would never have considered yellow to be a neutral colour before! I also have a bag full of grey wool, and some lovely Rowan Colourscape that should go with several pairs of trousers as well.
Of course, this is only half of my wardrobe… the non-work section’s going to be a different challenge, I think.
Oh, and I should also mention, the thing that got me started on all of this (aside of being incapable of making a decision at seven o’clock in the morning) was reading Coletterie’s Wardrobe Architect series. It’s a little more in depth than I needed, but it’s an interesting read, and should be a real help to anybody else who’s struggling with what to wear!