Today, I’m not cribbing my actual post title from a 70s or 80s cut. But today’s topic did bring a 1980 classic to mind, so let’s keep the playlist going a little bit longer, shall we?

And the great insight that brought this tune into my head (drum roll, please):

I have entirely too many clothes.

Not too long before the COVID started, a friend of mine had been toying with the notion of hosting a plus-sized clothes exchange. In the moment, it was an idea I was all on board for. But, for obvious reasons, we are no longer making plans for such a socially irresponsible kind of event.

Which is probably all the best for me. Because I need to get really thoughtful about what sort of approach I should be taking in any kind of clothes swap.

Like: is there a way for me to 100% be contributing to a clothes swap without actually bringing anything new home? ‘Cos seriously, that is exactly what I should be doing.*

The other piece of strategery I need to figure out is how to choose what clothes to put on the giveaway pile. Because for the most part, I’ve made the first and easiest “Kondo-cut” by purging all the clothes that I don’t like, and even most of the ones that I feel lukewarm about.

Well, there might be a few more cuts I can make on the “lukewarm” front. I mean: I still have a couple of blazers I’ve been hanging onto in case I ever needed to rock out that flavor of professional garb for a particular event. But, you know what? If I can do Congressional visits in my work dresses, maybe I can let those blazers go after all.

Still, even if I were to take a few last lukewarm items out of my wardrobe, I would still be left with closets and dressers that are overstuffed with really good clothes. Clothes I like, clothes I look good in and feel good in. But still: too damn many of those good, joy-bringing clothes.

What’s a girl to do?

I know what I’d like to be able to do. I would love to invite a few close girlfriends over, ply them with wine and snacks, and then try on a shit-ton of these clothes so I can get their help with sorting out the merely good from the fucking awesome.

Figure out what is the absolute best of the best to keep in my closet.

Alas, these being COVID days, that’s not going to be a possibility in the foreseeable future.

I’m not sure I can see this dream of mine being readily adapted to a teleconferencing format. So either I will muddle through on my own or the closet purge will have to wait a few more months.

I suppose I could set myself numerical targets. Keep X number of dresses, Y number of T-shirts, Z pairs of undies…. And then just winnow out the “least favorite” in each category until I reach whatever the target is.

But exactly what numbers should I use? I am not, have never been, and will never be a minimalist,** so I will not be using a purely utilitarian metric for how many dresses or shirts I “need” to have. So what’s a number that’s high enough to actually give me the variety of colors and styles that I take such joy in, without being ridonkulously excessive?

Damned if I know.

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* Too. Damn. Many. Clothes.

** Do y’all remember my music collection?

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Image credit: Photo taken by the author, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.