The 30for30 is a popular closet remix challenge. This February 1st I will be hosting a #moms30for30, which is a challenge we have been doing since 2014, where we wear 30 items for 30 days. 

You can learn so much about your relationship to your clothes and how to make your closet WORK FOR YOU! 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Google Podcasts | Spotify | RSS

 

The build-up to the big closet declutter:

• Packing outfits for a trip
• How do you feel when you see your fave outfits hung up in a tidy closet
• How do you feel about your cluttered closet full of all the things

What can help you do an effective closet declutter? 

If you are gearing up to declutter your closet then consider getting to know your clothes, putting them through an interview of what will stay. I like to do this with a closet remix challenge, like the #moms30for30, wearing 30 items for 30 days and putting together different outfits. 

Start paying attention to the clothes you reach for the most, try on clothes you rarely wear and ask how you feel in them (are they uncomfortable for you?). 

 

What we need to know about doing a closet remix challenge

This isn’t about looking the most instagrammable for a full month. This is about getting dressed, putting outfits together and making some decisions about what will earn a spot in your closet. 

This comes down to the big question we often face when we declutter our clothes:

Can I still be enough if I don’t keep a closet full of options?

Decluttering your closet may challenge your sense of security and you might not a scarcity mindset coming in (check out the episode on that right here). 

 

Will you join the challenge and do a 30for30 with us?

This is about learning more about your relationship to your clothes and how you are dressing yourself each day. 

I am doing this challenge for the seventh time (started them in 2014) and I learn (relearn) something valuable about my relationship to my clothes and how I am getting dressed. 

This is meant to be fun and helpful. It can help you put together outfits that you feel great in. 

The challenge isn’t about being the cutest and trendiest, the challenge is more about getting dressed each day. 

 

Ways to let me know you will join in the challenge:

Share it in the Facebook group

Let me know on Instagram

Let me know by responding to the Simple Saturdays email

 

Full transcript

0:09
Welcome to this podcast. I’m here to help you think about the ways that you have been showing up for your life on autopilot. Letting life just happen at you letting things just build up. You might notice this if you have some frustrations and overwhelmed some resentment, you might be living on autopilot. And I want to help you look at the ways that you can simplify. Remove the distractions, remove the clutter, from your home, your heart and your life, so that you can show up for things on purpose with intention.

0:38
So this, it’s been a while. It’s been a while since I’ve been back on the podcast, I took a week off again, this winter is slowing me down. I feel like maybe I should just hibernate, like maybe I should just call it what it is and go hibernate, like compare and see all in the spring. But I just love the podcast so much. So I’m back again. I was sick this past week, I had a kid home for some of the week. And I really it’s been a while since I’ve been sick, not COVID. But it’s been a while since I’ve been sick.

1:06
And I just had to laugh at myself. Because I was dreaming over the fall. I’m having this real sick day where I would like you know, before you had kids where you would just stay home and you would watch TV in your pajamas and just check out. And then it turned out I got one. And I really struggled with giving myself a sick day. Which is weird because of all the advice I give my friends and my clients to listen to their bodies and honor their seasons. It’s another thing to do it right. I mean, I can call in sick to work. I can put the podcast off for a week, but I’m still doing school. And school just feels like this nagging roommate that never leaves my couch. And anytime I walk down the hall and just shouts at me. So it was tough for me to give myself a sick day, I constantly felt like I should be doing all of these other things. And I mean, I sat on the couch and folded laundry that that was like my compromise.

2:02
But the whole time I did it, I felt a tension. I could hear that roommate heckling me. And this was a practice for me in sitting in that tension, that tension of this feeling of urgency, that there’s all these things that needed to be done yesterday. Because that urgency is useful for me, it often keeps me moving forward and moving forward. But I had to remember that sometimes that urgency is optional.

2:29
So this is an encouragement to you all. If you need a sick day, take a sick day. If you need a day of rest, take a day of rest. Don’t buy into your own urgency all the time. Sometimes it’s unnecessary. It’s not really about getting better at doing all of the things. It’s about discerning which things matter the most right now. Alright, this isn’t what we’re talking about today.

2:51
Let’s, let’s open it back up to what we’re here to talk about today. And that is our closets, your relationship to your closet, and I have a big pitch for you to do a closet challenge with me.

3:02
So I’ve been looking at my closet for a while and my closet is that standard. Like I don’t know a six foot wide single rod closet. I share it with my husband, we have a small bedroom. Like it feels cramped in there with our bed and our two dressers. And we each have a dresser. He’s got that big six drawer one. I’ve got that small three drawer ones because I hang most of my stuff.

3:24
But I look in my closet. And it’s a mess. There’s laundry hampers, there’s bedsheets, there’s suitcases, Christmas stuff, basketballs. Like, what how did these things get in here? This is what life is like, right? So decluttering is a process we always need to be doing because eventually you’re going to open up your closet to get a sweater and there’ll be a basketball and bar soap and you’ll be like what is happening in my closet.

3:47
So I’ve been itching to tidy up this closet for a while. I know that means I’m going to do it for real. I’m going to take everything out of it and do a whole declutter of it.

3:57
Another thing that really got me ready to do like a closet declutter was I packed for about five days away over the Christmas break. And I don’t know how you pack but I like to pack by putting outfits together, and then adding maybe 19 More things into the bag. kind of joking. For the most part, I like to stick to these outfits. And sometimes it’s good because it actually makes me wear what I packed then I might be too nervous to follow through on that outfit. But there’s not many other options in my bag. So I will wear what I packed.

4:29
And then do you ever go to a hotel and you hang up all your clothes you packed and you look in that little hotel closet and you feel like you’re living your best life with all your ideal self outfits lined up on those fancy wooden hangers. And whenever I go to hotel, I just think I want my house to feel like this. Like there’s function and simplicity and just my favorite things because that’s what we pack right when we’re on vacation. I also went to the mall when I was on Christmas vacation and I don’t live near a mall so it had been a while and it just gave me This like, like, tightness in my chest, that everything I owned was horrible and everything I was wearing needed to be burned.

5:09
Like, it’s so easy to just walk into a mall and be like, I need a whole new wardrobe. I need everything that I see. So that was kind of another wake up call that like, No, I have clothes at home that I bought that I like that make nice outfits.

5:21
So all of those together, and then I come home to my messy closet, and I’m just really starting to pump myself up. And I’m gonna do a big declutter, I really want my closet to have what I love. And more importantly, I wanted to have clothes I want to wear.

5:36
Now here’s the thing, we we talk about decluttering your closets and having clothes that we love. But the key that we need, what we really need to work on is knowing how to wear it. Practicing getting dressed, it’s so nerdy, right? Just like you need to try out recipes to know what you like, you need to try out outfits to know what you like and feel good in. And yes, it’s as dorky as it sounds, or maybe you think it’s vain. But let’s just drop the labels and say that it is helpful, it’s helpful to know what outfits you can make when you shop your own closet. Because then you don’t have to think about it. You just put clothes on in the morning that you know you’ll like wearing.

6:16
So I’m aiming to do this big declutter, I’m going to do it probably this weekend. And I’m recording this podcast in advance. So this has probably already happened. Maybe I put it on Instagram, probably definitely in the email newsletter. And one thing that I’m going to do, that’s going to help me with my closet, declutter, and I haven’t done this in a few years, is the 30for0, the #moms30for30. That’s when you were 30 items of clothes for 30 days. And you might have heard this done under different names like, project 333 capsule wardrobe challenge.

6:48
When I did this the first time Oh, man, it was 2014. And I did it with a bunch of other bloggers because that’s what we were back then. And we called it the hashtag moms 30 for 30. And this will be my seventh one that I’m going to do. So I’m going to start it February 1, I hope you will do it with me.

7:06
But I’ve been thinking about it and kind of mentally preparing. And the way that I’ve been preparing for this is to be paying more attention to the clothes that I love to wear. And you know, what I found that’s really counterintuitive is they’re usually not the clothes I wear often because I’m saving them, which I know makes no sense. Like my favorite white sweater, I’ve worn it probably three times it doesn’t make any sense. I should wear it like every week, right? Just wear the heck out of it.

7:33
And then there’s the clothes that I need to pay attention to that I don’t love to wear. So I’m 39 and I have decided, I’m not going to wear clothes that are uncomfortable. If they pinch or pucker or right up or down or squeeze spots. I don’t want to be squeezed, then it has no place in my closet. And I don’t want to be precious about all this. I want to really let things go.

7:56
And a big hurdle I know I’m going to have because I often face this when I do a declutter, especially with my clothes. Is that scarcity mindset? What if I don’t have enough clothes? What if I declutter too much? What if that something I decluttered comes back into style? And I wish I kept it? That’s happened to me? What if the clothes I kept? Aren’t the cutest or the trendiest? Like what if I make bad decisions? And what it all comes down to is, can I still be enough? If I don’t keep a closet full of options? And as someone who has done this, and has asked this? I will tell you? The answer is yes. This is this is all a false sense of security, and decluttering will really challenge your sense of self security and your scarcity mindset. I’m going to link in episode to that in the show notes.

8:44
So what do you think? Do you want to declutter your closet Do you want to look in your closet, and feel like everything that’s in there is something that I love. So this is my pitch for you to join in the 30for30. If you are interested in it, then I hope you will tell me in the Facebook group or let me know on Instagram.

9:01
And here’s the thing if you participate, you don’t have to share your outfits with anyone. You are just doing this for yourself to learn more about you and your relationship to your clothes and dressing yourself. But if you want encouragement and accountability, feel free to be sharing this in the Facebook group or with me on Instagram. Like I said, this will be my seventh time doing it. And I learned something every single time. And I hope that just indicates to you that this practice this challenge of being really aware and engaged with our relationship to something in our life, whether it’s our phone or our clothes, or how we’re talking to our kids, you know, anything that we’re focusing in on and paying attention to, we’re gonna learn something. In the coming episodes I’ll talk more about decluttering the closet, having less clothes, what many people call a capsule wardrobe, which really means having the clothes you love, and not keeping the clothes that you don’t want or love to wear.

9:58
So this is meant to be fun, it’s meant to be helpful for you helping you put together outfits that you feel great in that you can take throughout the months to come and just get dressed without thinking about it. And like I said, the first one I did was in 2000. And man 2014 I thought it was earlier than that. Okay, anyways, so timelines are blurrier timelines of toddler and baby life is blurry to me.

10:24
So I but what I want to say is that I was doing this when I had babies and toddlers at home, and mostly just living that stay at home mom life, which is what I really want this to be about. I really want this to be a challenge, where we don’t feel like we have to look the cutest and the best. And, you know, the trendiest, I really want this to be a challenge where you get dressed each day, I noticed such a difference in how I felt about myself and my day, when I went through the process of getting dressed every day for a month. It sounds really crazy. But I think in the light of these past couple of years, we can all appreciate how it feels to get dressed every day versus how it feels to not get dressed every day.

11:03
So I really hope you will join in. Like I said, we’re here for the fun and we’re here for what we’re going to learn but it’s going to be fun. So stop by in the Facebook group or on Instagram and let me know if you are interested. And you know, if you aren’t doing it and you still are in the Facebook group, I hope that you will just cheer on the women that are joining it. Have a great week friends

Transcribed by https://otter.ai