With the rollercoaster the beginning of the year has brought, it’s given me a need to gain control back somewhere. The easiest place for that? Well, my closet no doubt! It’s no secret how much I love thrifting and it’s no secret how much I love to feel great in my clothes. Because of that, however, clothes can sometimes be hard to part with, even if I do need to start the purging process.
I know other van lifers have installed closet space in their vans. Maybe at some point I’ll be that focused, but for now, I’m going to be living out of compression bags. I found this recommendation for Osprey ones from another vanlifer. They seemed like the perfect compromise between space and function. Thanks to my wonderful niece, I now have 3 different sizes to play around with and see what works best!
With that, I started to focus on what clothes I’ll be taking and what clothes I’ll be leaving. There are a few staple items that I will not give up. My black hiking dress is one of them, so I added it to the “necessity” list. As we get closer, I’ll give a more precise breakdown of what I’m bringing along, but right now the focus is on minimizing the choices. I know I’ll need things to get dirty and hike in, comfy clothes to lounge in, clothes to be social in, and clothes to put on if I need to Zoom or be professional. Quite broadly, that’s it.
The first stage, which I began almost immediately after adopting LuLu, was just trimming down what wasn’t serving me. Didn’t love it? Didn’t need it. That’s brought me a long way.
When I started making a list of necessities, I began to feel overwhelmed. I have so many options – what if I forget my favorite dress?! So, with the recent news that I won’t be going into an office soon, I decided to start there. For the second stage, I went through all my clean and hanging clothes and made a “will only wear to work” pile, a “will wear it any time pile”, and a “TBD” pile. Believe it or not, there were only about 5 things in the TBD pile. A couple of them moved onto the “work” pile once I picked them up a second time. The total number of clothing items I purged from my closet? THIRTY. (To see some of the process and what I wore my final days of working in an office, check out my Instagram HERE.)
Yeah, I’m pretty proud of myself! Some of these items are things I enjoy wearing to work, so I’ll be storing those. I just won’t need to take them with me. Some of these items are things that I wore to work so I wouldn’t wear the same thing to work every day and those items I’m saying goodbye to. For this stage of purging, I’m very happy with my results.
I’ll still need to do this with all the clothes that are in the wash, but that should be pretty easy with only a few working days left to go. The really hard part is going to be underwear. That will be the final stage of deciding what can I reasonably fit.
I started out today feeling overwhelmed and unsure of which way was up, but by focusing on something I could control, I’m feeling a little better now. Thanks for reading!
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