Be More with Less

simplicity is love

A Simple Closet Inspires a Simple Life

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Tiny Wardrobe Tour #project333

A simple closet didn’t just change my wardrobe, it changed my whole life. When I challenged myself to dress with 33 items or less, including clothes, shoes, jewelry and accessories for 3 months, I didn’t know what to expect.

It took a couple of days to sort through my jam-packed closet, dresser drawers, and all the boxes in the garage, but I finally cleaned my closet out for good.

My stuff was strategically scattered all over the place, so it never looked like too much. When I pulled my shoes and coats in from other closets, brought all of clothes from different seasons in and had 100% of my wardrobe piled on my bed, all I could think was, “How did this happen?”

It was horrifying, but important for me to see it all in one place like that. I needed to feel overwhelmed by the stuff I had acquired, collected, stored, and ignored, before I could let it go. I didn’t let it go right away. For the first 3 months I simply boxed it up and put it out of sight. All that remained in my closet were 33 items.

  • 21 items of clothing
  • 4 pairs of shoes
  • 2 pieces of jewelry
  • 6 accessories

My closet looked empty and I wondered how I would get through the next three months with nothing to wear. Would I be bored? Would I have enough? What would people think?

A simple closet inspires a simple life.

3 months of dressing with less changed me.

There were the easy to identify outside changes …

  • My mornings were easier.
  • I got ready on time.
  • I had more free time.
  • I saved money.
  • I looked better.

And then there were the more meaningful, life-changing inside shifts.

  • I felt lighter with less guilt and decision fatigue. Seeing all the money I spent on clothing I didn’t wear or enjoy every day wore me down. When the stuff went, the guilt went with it.
  • I had more attention for things I really cared about. Now that my weekends weren’t consumed with shopping, and I wasn’t searching the internet for the best deal, I had time to consider what my real interests were.
  • I began to find confidence in who I was instead of what I wore. I always thought I needed something new to wear to be confident. I needed the right heels to feel powerful, or a new dress to feel sexy, or a new jacket to feel put together and prepared. I felt all of those things and more without anything new.

When I realized I was happier dressing with less, I got even more curious (and serious) about living with less.

More than 5 years have passed since I started dressing with less and in that time, I continued to dress with 33 items or less every 3 months, gave away close to 90% of my stuff, downsized from a big house to a small apartment, and left a corporate job to do work I love.

Living with less helped everyone around me too. With each thing we let go of a chunk of stress went with it, and we became a happier family and healthier individuals.

A Simple Closet Inspires a Simple Life

I love sharing glimpses of real life capsule collections from people who are taking minimalist fashion challenge Project 333. I recently posted this image on Instagram and asked “What freaks you out the most about limiting yourself to 33 items (clothes, shoes, jewelry, accessories) for 3 months? Let me have it … your fears, worries, excuses, and concerns.”

The response was incredible! Because I know how powerful this challenge has been for me, I want to address anything standing in the way of other people giving it a try. You can read the comments and my answers on the post, and I want to answer more questions and dig deeper with a free live webinar on Thursday, April 7th at 6PM ET (NYC time).

Update: You can watch the recorded webinar by clicking here.

Comments

  1. I’ve completed Step 1 of my wardrobe downsize simply by retiring. I held a cocktail hour (literally 1 hour) when all my work colleagues could drop in have a glass of wine and appetizer and select any of my professional wardrobe items I would no longer need. It was fun and successful. My colleagues were so pleased to walk away with a blazer, blouse, pant, pair of shoes or belt. In that one hour, my friends saw me wave farewell to my role as a college administrator to a newly retired gal who intended to live in jeans, t-shirts and flip flops!!!!!!! That was an easy and welcomed transition. Now that real work begins….and I’d love, love, love your help in minimizing my wardrobe. Hope I win your 1-hour of consulting!

  2. Congratulations, Courtney, on this outstanding accomplishment! I had been giving away most of my stuff last year in preparation for moving from a house of 6 rooms into a 1 bedroom apartment (564 sq. ft.) in a senior independent retirement community. October 15, 2015 was the big moving day for me. The process has been a complete JOY — letting go of stuff I no longer need or use or love. I love the simple life among caring friends, but it took me years to become willing to make the change. Francine Jay’s book THE JOY OF LESS was a great inspiration. I even started a Meetup group in my home to study the book and keep me motivated. Now that Spring is here, I am purging winter clothes again and giving away what I did not wear this past winter. It’s a lifelong process and fun to discover what little I really do need to live a happy life! God bless you in your Project 333 demonstration. I am inspired to take the challenge myself for 3 months.

  3. I can only cheer you on as you continue on with this passion for yoursel as well as set up webinars, workshops and presentation tours.
    I have started with my wardrobe but am lagging some. Guess I’m doing this my way which is slower than all at once. I have tossed,given away, or taken to consignment items I would never have gotten to if I was not in this process. I have placed a STOP on most of my shopping except for a few tops to complete an outfit that makes me happy. I have found a new life in some clothing items I haven’t worn. As well as jewelry. Already my closet is easier to manage. I’m putting capsules together because that helps when we travel to see family as we have 5 out of town kids. For the first time ever I have a solid grounding under me in which to make clothing decisions.
    For 8 weeks I have been tossing 25 things a day. That means there are 1,400 less items in this house than when I started. This has included clothing, jewelry, shoes, purses, games, paper items that were stacked( old professional papers, magazines, kept cards, all sorts of things. A friend and I are doing this together. We have weekly designated talks about how we are doing. She is talking about writing an article about this. She’s a good writer. I love this process. I cannot imagine not doing this and not coming to terms with the clothing. I loved your description of how you gathered every bit of clothing spread throughout your home into one room. And then you started to pare down. I cheer you!
    I will get there, too.

  5. I’m in a confused bind, I’m in love with the ‘idea’ of a minimal wardrobe but I think I love clothes too much, I’m yet to get the right balance. Because I seasonally do a huge shop & then I am so annoyed with myself , after the event 🙁
    In October 2015 I did a wardrobe edit & reduced a lot, 6 months later I’ve used up the hangers & space again.
    CC please help me to stop buying & instead wear & enjoy the lovely stuff I already have. Many thanks for all the ways you keep reminding us to be more with less.

    • Rozen, I like clothes and novelty in my wardrobe too, and I find the 33 for 3 months helps with my desire for novelty–after 3 months, I unpack my off-season clothes to pick my next 33, and it’s like getting a whole new wardrobe.

      • Scooter, I like that perspective! It reminds me of having to wait till September to wear the new school clothes your mother bought you in August.

  6. I’ve been downsizing my closet for one year. You’d think there wasn’t much to downsize after a Trans-Atlantic move three years ago followed by a no-shopping period. But there was.

    To this day, I can believe I paid extra to lug two suitcases with me across the ocean. Suitcases full of things that I never ever wore after that. The guilt of looking at them sadly hanging in the closet was definitely there. As was the guilt of knowing that I paid to get them there, only to put them away in a closet and never wear them again.

    So know I allow myself to get rid of them. I’m at 50 percent, with the obvious ones being gone (donated or consigned). The hard part is that now I have to deal with the rest of the 25 percent that I don’t wear, but that cost a pretty penny or would be harder to find again. Yes, sunk cost fallacy at its best.

    What helps is identifying pieces that I can replace them with, that I can buy for life (or at least for a long time) from ethical makers and vendors. I say identifying because I don’t just go out and replace what I get rid of. I just want to know that some thing can be replaced, if need be. Most of the times, need never is. 🙂

  7. Hello Courtney, greetings from Switzerland!
    For me it all started one day before last new year’s eve. We were invited for dinner at friends of us and they mentioned, that their community now has plastic recycling. So, the plastic does not go into the normal garbage but gets collected separately and recycled. The result was that they produce much, much less garbage. So, I wondered whether we (2 adults, 2 kids of 4 and 6 years) could also do with only 1 instead of 2 garbage bags a week by separating recyclable trash from “real” garbage more strictly, refusing taking little plastic bags that you are offered whatever you buy, always having a small foldable bag with me when I need something extra to carry and buying most veggies and fruits on the market, i.e. no plastic package etc… And – yes, it’s 1 bag every week to 10 days! ☺
    As a consequence, I checked the internet for plastic recycling, came across plastic free living, garbage free living (wow!), minimalism, and – yes- somehow discovered project 333. That was at the beginning of February and I was so enthusiastic, that I cleaned out my wardrobe a few days later. Now there are three big bags of clothes waiting to be donated (they come pick it up every few months), I sold a few good pieces that didn’t really fit me, there is one box with “cannot really decide yet”- clothes in the wardrobe, about 10 items which I hope to sell on a woman dress exchange event, and two boxes with out-of-season pieces which will be further reduced during this year. My February-March wradrobe consists of exactly 33 items but not including jackets (3, but mostly waering 1), shoes (2 pairs), gloves, thick scarve and wollen hat. I note which items I have been wearing and this helps me further picking out those items which maybe do not fit me as well as I thought. I have „for work“ items and „at home“ items and a few pieces that fit both occasions. I always prepared my clothes fort he next day on the evening, so that I would not have to decide what to wear in the morning. But this could easily take up to 15 minutes (cool shirt, want to wear it again, but what would fit… oh no… ok, maybe the red jeans… but they are so skinny, and I do not have a fresh long-cut shirt so that is no good, I need something else, ok, again the boring dark blue pants…). No it’s 1 minute, and I am always smiling because I think „yeah, I do not have so much „stuff“ in my closet!“.
    As a result, I was finaly wearing my (dark blue) blazer regularly for work and realized that I really like that. So for my spring wardrobe I would like to add a second blazer in a brighter colour, and for that I will use part of the monney I earned from selling the other clothes. I am also looking forward to replacing the warmer items from my current wardrobe with „good old“ lighter items that have been packed away. I further realized that I have more pairs of jeans than I really need, and that I do not need that many hoodies. Also, I found out that blouses are not really my thing and that there is no sense in keeping a few of them „just in case“ for some sort of „you never know“ occasion… 😉
    I keep on further decluttering our home and my life, little by little, and it is indeed very deliberating. Just looking at clothes in a shop window, and instead of thinking „oh, might that be something for me?“, I think „nice, but I do not need anything!“ – and that is a great feeling of freedom! ☺

  8. Thank you for sharing this. I am a 36 year old mother of 2, and have been struggling with pain for about 5 months due to a back injury. Everything seems to be so much harder, but these little challenges have made it easier.

  9. What freaks me out most about the 333 challenge is the fear of not having enough clean t-shirts to wear. I usually wear t-shirts one day only before tossing it in the wash, as they are not fresh and clean anymore. I fear that i am just too much of a sweaty betty for this challenge. Especially in a small household with only 1 wash a week at the most.

  10. I’ve been loving P333! I read your posts for a long time before I finally took the plunge, but I’m so glad I did! Switching my wardrobe for the season used to be so difficult and stressful. I would put it off because it took too much time and effort. It was physically exhausting to drag suitcases of clothes out of the closet and try everything on. P333 took some practice but now, a couple years later, it’s smooth sailing.

    Last week, for the first time, I was actually looking forward to doing the seasonal switch! All of my off-season clothes now fit in one large suitcase. I pulled it out of the closet, took out my summer clothes, and chose the items I wanted for spring. Then I put away all of the winter clothes, except the ones I wanted for spring (it was 75 degrees three days ago; today it’s snowing – Boston definitely requires some variety!) I counted everything up and had 37 items! It was easy to just remove 4. The suitcase went back in the closet, the clothes were neatly folded and hung, and that was it – less than 2 hours, no stress, minimal effort, and no need to try on clothes because I’d already gotten rid of anything that didn’t fit well!

    Thanks so much for P333! It’s been so freeing!

  11. I will retire from school nursing in June and am so looking forward to giving all my ” school dress” mostly polo shirts and casual Friday T shirts to my mother in law. I would like her to cut them up for pillows to go with the beautiful quilt she made me 2 years ago (my “big cat” and old military T shirts).

    I love Betsy Asmus’s idea- having a cocktail party give away. Although, I will still probably teach nursing at our local college and will need some “business”/church attire. Something to really consider in the next 8 weeks.

    I also want to do a whole house declutter and think that would be a fun way to spend my first few months between sleeping late, reading and traveling. Having too much “stuff” when I was in the AF wasn’t a problem; after living in the same house for 30 years and being married to a pack rat for 25, it now is.

  12. I’d really like to see some of the outfits you put together with your 33 pieces, and learn about when you wore them: work/play/meetings/events/etc. Could we see? Thanks!

  13. I missed the instagram question you asked, but I was thinking….you know, the thing I still struggle with, even after several years of limiting my wardrobe, is how I have so many “audiences”–I have stuff I wear to the office I’d never wear elsewhere, stuff I wear only for performing, a little formalwear that only goes to the opera, weddings and funerals, “active”/grungy stuff I wear digging in the garden and working out, and casual stuff for the rest of the time. My life is so compartmentalized.

    In a way, the small wardrobe is probably easier for girly-girls, because dresses are very versatile formality-wise and only one piece! Shoes are a particular struggle, because at least three levels of dressing up x black and brown = 6 pair, five really as I don’t need formal brown, and that’s without tennies, muck boots, and suchlike. There goes 1/3 of the wardrobe, just on shoes! That’s part of why my number’s always been higher than 33, but it feels like too much, still.

  14. I am moving in 2 days. What is fortunate for me is that the assignment is for 6 months. I’ll be in Arkansas where it will be warm/hot the entire time.
    This will be my first test and because I am doing spring/summer/early fall, I have packed 45 items of clothes and 7 pairs of shoes (including my sneakers). I am leaving the rest behind in my place here in PA. I know it’s not 33, but this is the leanest wardrobe I have had in decades.

  15. Ouch! I have spent the past year transitioning into a minimalist wardrobe and just discovered one big problem: when you have few items and you have an accident which destroys one of them, the one you wear 4x week, your best, most diverse pair of jeans; that hurts. And they have been discontinued. So I feel really let down, like I have to start this big process of finding a great, diverse pair of jeans when I thought I didn’t have to shop again for a long time.

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