Audit Your Life: Your Wardrobe

October 3rd 2007

Today I am starting a new series of posts on Organize IT - called Audit Your Life - discussing how you can audit various aspects of your life so as to determine where you stand, what is missing, what is needed and how you can structure and optimize each area. In this first post I will look at your clothes collection and describe the process of auditing your wardrobe so that it functions efficiently and fully serves its purpose in your life.

Firstly it is important to understand what your ultimate goal and state is with your wardrobe. This is what you are ideally aiming for and represents what a highly functional and usable wardrobe would be like.

It needs to be efficient and de-cluttered. There is absolutely no purpose in keeping clothes you will hardly ever wear. It just makes it harder to dig through your wardrobe and find clothes you like and do actually wear.
It needs to be varied and flexible enough to cover all the occasions that you would possibly attend. For instance, it’s not ideal to have a pair of jeans that only goes with one type of shirt.

Stage 1: De-clutter
With all this in mind the first step to an effective audit is to organize and de-clutter your existing wardrobe so you can see the bigger picture and know what state your wardrobe is really in. Get some big black bags and get rid of anything that:

You no longer like
Is out of fashion
Any more than one pair of scruffs
Is ripped, torn, stained etc.
Doesn’t fit.
Still has the price tag on after six months ;)
Anything embarrassing.

Be ruthless with this stage and make sure to include shoes, underwear, hats, belts etc as you go through everything. Remember, if you don’t like a dress now it’s highly doubtful you will change your mind in six months time. Likewise, don’t keep clothes hoping they will come back in fashion, you may have a long wait ahead of you.

Stage 2: How flexible is your wardrobe?
By this stage your wardrobe should have a lot more space in it and you should have plenty of clothes that you can throw away, recycle, give to friends, etc. In this stage we are going to start looking at how flexible and varied your remaining clothes are. In an ideal situation you want most of your clothes to go with each other so you are not always fixed to particular styles/colors, and a smaller selection of clothes for special/specific occasions. With this in mind print out this wardrobe audit sheet I have ddesigned. Along the top row write down all the tops (shirts, jumpers) you have and along the left column fill in all the bottoms (trousers, skirts) you have. Remember not to include clothes you wear for special occasions. Now go through each box putting a tick if the corresponding combinations fits together and finally total everything up. Ideally you want to have high numbers as those clothes provide a lot more choice when choosing what to wear. A shirt that goes with most of your trousers is much more useful than a jumper with a bizarre pattern that only goes with a particular skirt.

Stage 3: What do you need?
In this section we need to work out what is missing from your wardrobe so you are covered for all occasions. With the information from stage 2 you need to give some careful consideration. For those clothes that have low numbers and only go with a limited selection of other clothes, you need to consider whether you still really want to keep them. After all, you probably won’t wear them that often if they only go with particular items. If you do intend to keep them you need to make a note to go shopping for clothes that fit with them.

Next you need to have a look at those clothes you have for special occasions. Make a list of all your responsibilities and any occasions you regularly attend (don’t include one-off events otherwise you will probably end up including tuxes and ball dresses!) and list all the clothes that are required for them. For instance, if you have to look smart at work you need to have a good collection of suits, ties and shirts. If you go to the gym regularly you obviously need gym kit. With this information, cross-reference it with what is in your wardrobe and see if everything you require is there. If not, add it to your shopping list.