I ran out of clothes to wear outside: the other side of being minimalist

Reuse. Reduce. Recycle.

Right?

I have called myself a minimalist for a very very long time. And I married a minimalist as well.

Back in college, I went on for a whole month without repeating a top. That’s a lot of tops, right? None of them were sustainable and that concept was foreign to me at that time. Anyway, I kept hoarding buying things on sale but never too much. I never had a cupboard that could not accommodate clothes but I did have clothes with questionable quality. I also did not have festive clothes or party clothes.

I made my first purge in 2013. I let go of all the things that was old, unwearable and lying in my closet for far too long. The typical: to keep, to donate and to throw away piles were made.

After this I became a little mindful about my purchases. Probably a little too mindful. I decided to stop buying anything new till something needed a replacement. Which should have worked well. But then I went a step ahead and said if two things go out, one new thing comes in. Why was I being so tough on myself?

1. I moved so many times that I did not want to carry a lot of baggage.
2. I had lost interest in dressing up.
3. I was sad in general.

Now, this would have been good if I had good fashion sense and had built a capsule wardrobe but I did not know anything about that so I just had a random set of clothes and I wore them as per my schedule…yes I had a schedule…specific clothes on specific days.

This led to over wearing of a certain clothes, over washing and damage. This meant I had to let go of more clothes and I started wearing some of these at home.

Then the pandemic happened and I gained a lot of weight. So I did not fit into the clothes I had. I had no will to buy new ones and I just started wearing my husband’s t-shirts (the ones he had left in the discard pile).

This resulted in me making fewer videos because I didn’t feel like coming on to the camera. Also, I wasn’t going out much because…again… the same reason.

That was 2 years ago.

I am slowly allowing myself to buy the basics to build a capsule wardrobe, to invest in clothes that will work for me and will serve me for a longer period of time.

For this, I decided to find my season colour and only invest in the pieces that work best for my skin tone.

I will write more about it next time.

But for now, all I want to say is that you have one life and it is important to find joy in little things like wearing something that makes you look AND feel good.