Cutting the Strings: 5 Ways to De-sentimentalize Clothes & Clean Out Your Closet

In my twenties (and a bit beyond), I used to take photos of my favorite clothes before donating them to Goodwill, lining them all up like relatives at a family reunion, showing them off to their best advantage for one last hurrah. Then we would part ways and I'd come home from Goodwill feeling lighter and freer, always wishing that I'd donated even more clothes. It was thoroughly liberating to have less stuff and more space in my closet--especially when I lived in Manhattan, where closets represent valuable real estate (and many studio apartments are just about the size of a walk-in closet).

The liberating effect of Goodwill aside, there have been a few items over the years that I just could not--and will not--part with, such as:

My mother's waist-length fur coat from the 1950's. Even though I'm anti-fur myself and will never wear it, my mother is not on this earth anymore and the fur coat is. It's inseparably linked to my childhood memories of her.
The shirts my husband and I wore on the night we met.
My wedding gown. I've never really understood selling your wedding gown, unless you had an ugly divorce and you're trying to put the whole experience behind you.
The hospital-issued baby caps for each of my children.
The sweater and the dress in the shadow boxes pictured above, because they're my two absolute favorite outfits from when my children were tiny. Just walking by them in the hallway every day makes me happy (in a bittersweet kind of way).

I remember the very first time that I needed to make space in my son's dresser for new clothes. As I folded the outgrown, tiny clothes into a pile, I dissolved into a puddle of tears. I put many of them aside in storage boxes and gave just a few to charity. Luckily, my kids have a dress code at their school, so we have a lot fewer "cute" clothes now to form attachments to. But over the years, I've gotten much better at moving clothes (theirs and mine) out of the house (below is a photo of the last haul), using these strategies:

Review your stored clothes periodically. Seasonally, I go through the kids' clothes that I've saved and weed it down, thinking, "Do I really want to store this little dress for 25 years, when another little girl could be enjoying and appreciating it tomorrow?"As for my own clothes, if I haven't wanted to wear it within the past year, and more importantly, if I can't muster up the enthusiasm to wear it within the next week, it has to go.

Take full advantage of "Thing Nausea." In my post called Don't Fall Into the "Junk Trunk" Trap, I told you about Cindy Glovinsky and her two god-send books for clearing out clutter, Making Peace with the Things in your Life and One Thing at a Time. In the former, she writes about "Thing Nausea": "Sooner or later, as you continue to sort and scrutinize, decide about and dispose of your Things, you will reach a point where you feel that if you have to look at another Thing, you will throw up." Glovinsky talks you through it, but I've fully embraced Thing Nausea and found it's much easier for me to look at clothes with an unsentimental eye if I'm weeding them out when it's very late, I'm very tired, or very cranky. I just want them GONE and the house CLEAN.

Remember: "The thing is not the person." That's what Peter Walsh was always telling the hoarders on "Clean Sweep", and I'd add, "The thing is not the experience." If you have a photo of yourself or a loved one in a favorite outfit, and the outfit is no longer being worn, don't save the outfit--frame the photo instead.

Put a physical cap on sentimental space. As Stephanie, my supremely stylish friend from Paris, advised me, "Just like the success of a diet often resides in allowing yourself one cheat day, I think that every person in the house should be allowed one junk drawer. The idea is that you don't give anyone in your house or yourself any grief for that one T-shirt from the best-summer-camp-ever that you still hang onto. BUT, as soon as one person's junk drawer is overflowing, that person must make a choice and get rid of something."

Put a date on the calendar to move it out. While I think it's a wise idea to move bags of clothing for Goodwill out of the house and into your car for the next time you drive past a collection bin in your town, an even better idea is to give yourself a firm date that they must be OUT. I've found that working with consignment shops is great for moving clothes out because often, these shops have specific drop-off hours or require appointments.

Here's one final thought: There are more important things in life than clothes and building up an overstuffed closet. Clothes do not make the man--or the woman, or the child. There's a big difference between saving a lambswool sweater that your great-grandmother knitted for your fifth birthday and saving a cute T-shirt from the infants' sale rack at Carter's. One is an heirloom, the other is deserving of a new home. Cut the strings and set it free.

Do you regularly pare down your clothes (when/how?), or do they accumulate in your closet long after their usefulness (why?). What's your favorite piece of sentimental clothing that you just cannot part ways with? Please share in the Comments section below (now powered by CommentLuv for ease of use). If you are reading this post via email subscription, click on the title or go to www.JoyfullyGreen.com and you can leave a comment at the original post.

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