Month 2: Clothes

During Month 2, Jen only wore 7 pieces of clothing. But, this is not a possibility for me. Between shoes and workout clothes, I would only have 4 pieces left and that doesn't cut it for this full-time working woman. I'm sure I'd have a convo at work about my wardrobe! My original plan for this month was to give away anything I didn't wear during the month. But, we are having a yard sale next weekend and I already pulled out a TON of clothes for that. So, I am only going to wear 7 different pieces of clothing from 7 different categories.

1) 7 bottoms (pants, skirts, shorts, maybe jeans)
2) 7 tops
3) 7 jackets/cardigans
4) 7 workout or pajama items
5) 7 summer items (bathing suit, cover-up, summer dress) (We are going to the beach for Mother's Day)
6) 7 under garments (I'll really have to keep up the washing for this one!)
7) 7 accessories (shoes, jewelry, etc)

This should show me how easily I could live off ~50 items of clothing/accessories. Instead, I have at least 4X that many!

Jen counted all her clothes, etc before she started this month's fast. I REALLY didn't want to do that but attempted it. I had over 315 pieces of clothes, which didn't count dirty clothes, pajamas, under garments, etc. I also had about 60 t-shirts! And, over 30 pairs of shoes!

She mentioned she had a lot of clothes with the tags still on, or that she'd worn only once, and paid full price for because she'd wait until the last minute to buy something. That is not me. I'm think I'm pretty practical when it comes to clothes. I do not buy anything that isn't on sale, and, more than likely, less than $20. I started thinking a few months ago, before I even read this book, that most of my dress pants and suit jackets are between 5-7 years old (from when I worked in retail during college). I even have a pair of pants that the clasp came off of, and I safety pin them closed every time I wear them, which is probably every other week. Having said that, I still obviously have very much excess in my clothing. Clothing that I don't wear and others could be benefiting from.

The pictures below are just my closet. They don't include my 10 (TEN!) dresser drawers, full of jeans, shorts, exercise clothes, bathing suits, camisoles, pajamas, underwear, etc. Geez!

These pictures were taken before I cleaned out in prep for our yard sale, so about half of the excess is already gone.

Upper left side of closet

Upper right side

Lower right side

Lower left side

Adam's t-shirts (I have just as many but they are hidden by my clothes)

Adam's half-side

Pants for both of us and dresses for me. Yes, I have way more closet space. Maybe that will change after this month.

Adam's jeans, shorts, etc. Probably mostly unused.

This is embarassing, but Taylor pulls my shoes out and tries them on, so I gave up putting them away.

The more I have looked at these pictures, the more embarrassed I have become (at the amount, at the sloppiness, etc), but I'm just trying to be real, trying to be honest, and trying to open up to let Jesus fill me more.

For the yard sale, I pulled out over 150 pieces of clothes. I now have a half of the bottom of the closet freed up, along with two dresser drawers completely empty! If I hung everything as close as it is in those pictures, I'd probably have the whole bottom half free. I also got rid of enough shoes that most of my shoes fit into that box (although, not tennis shoes and boots). This means I still have 15+ pairs of shoes! Even with trying to get rid of excess, I STILL HAVE EXCESS! Let's see what this month teaches me...

I plan to post pictures of the closet once its fully cleaned out and update throughout the month how the 7 categories of 7 clothing items is working.

Please feel free to join in our experiment if you're interested!