I know. It's a bit of an alien concept. But I'm trying to be good.
Following the last blog post, two large bags of clothes (both his and hers) have been removed from the closet and the house and donated back to the Blue Cross shop, allowing some of overflow stash in the spare room to be moved back into the closet. The overall effect doesn't appear to have made much of a difference. There are still close to 40 dresses in there, but culling a number of outfits that would likely have caused raised eyebrows and tuts on someone a good 30 years younger, as well as several jeans (when did 'he' last wear a pair of jeans?), tops, shirts and an old suit from 'his' side of the closet gives them (and the moths) a bit more room to breathe and means I no longer have to take a dozen things out the closet just to select a particular dress.
The ridiculously short pink peach dress picked up from £3 sale rack was also returned to the shop with a weak and probably transparent excuse that 'she' thought it was nearer an 8 than a 10 when she tried it (which , given the Primark label that I should have noticed at the time, was probably true.) Browsing the rack before leaving I was tempted by, but resisted, a black and white polka dot flared midi dress. Looking at it again a couple of days later I decided there was something I wasn't quite happy with and left it. A few days later I was similarly tempted by another black-on-white print midi/knee-length dress but left it on the rail to see if I felt the same about it a day later, but by which time it had gone, making the decision easier.
You do see some odd stuff in charity shops though. Last week there were three OTT short flouncy peach-pink bridesmaids' dresses on the same rack (they must have hated the bride for that, or possibly vice versa), and another(XXL, almost as wide as it was short) in white this week. Or how about a pair of orange bondage-strap jeggings.
Just after my own closet cull I spend a large part of an afternoon in a long back and forth Facebook exchange with someone who had posted about having to be ruthless in decluttering their own closet (more enviously a walk-in wardrobe) headed by a very similar photo of a crammed closet to the one in my post. That collection, amassed over a shorter 10 year period, was largely new designer outfits in the $100-$600 range, and would have given me a lot more pause than a cull of my own charity shop gleanings. (I spent most of a morning running a quick-change photoshoot to check which skirts and dresses were much too girly/short/tight and ought to be culled since the camera was likely to be less forgiving than the mirror. All now safely deleted, even the ones that didn't immediately make me wince. Incidentally, it's not a wise idea to mirror your OneDrive import folder on your partner's PC, even when you are careful to delete stuff since those deleted files and folders also show up in her own recycle bin and raise awkward questions about where they'd come from.
There are probably still another dozen dresses/tops that could be culled for donation and recycling. I notice I have periodic fads for certain styles of outfit and one of those was for peplum waists, and I could probably lose several of those. Likewise bolero tops. How very 80s. Luckily I never succumbed to Dynasty shoulder pads. (I really don't need any help there.)
Until next time, be good, or if not at least be careful or fab (or both).
xx
Susie
