The Clothes Mountain

Do you have too many things? Or do you need more and more? Could having too much clutter be effecting your mental health?

The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past

Marie Kondo

I like stuff! I like buying new, shiny, pretty things. I like to shop just to shop. It’s an endorphin rush, shopping can be addicting. I would say I have a mild addiction. I’m not in tons of debt because of shopping, but I have occasionally hidden purchases from my husband. Not that what I was buying needed to be concealed, but that I would buy stuff that I didn’t need for way too much money. If you and your significant other are trying to save money or pay off debt it would be rather annoying if the other was always making frivolous purchases.

Then I came upon a book by Marie Kondo, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. Now I would not call her a minimalist, but the book got me thinking about the stuff I owned.

During this post I will be focusing on clothes.

The first step was gathering up all my clothes into one pile….

You don’t realize how many clothes you have until you see the clothes mountain you can create on your bed. Yes, there is a bed under there. This picture was from early 2019. Admittedly I have to say decluttering clothes does help alleviate anxious feelings. Although I think having less clutter in general helps with anxiety. When it comes to clothes, downsizing leaves you with fewer choices. It doesn’t take me a full 20 minutes to pick out something to wear. I was able to reduce down to half a closet from a full closet. My husband’s clothes has been invited to hang with mine now.

Since then getting rid of my clutter is still an on-going process. Technically I decluttered, but didn’t do the full Marie Kondo work-up. I got off the wagon so to speak, well life happened and I got pregnant with our 3rd child. I had maternity clothes packed in my trunk to give away when I found out; they were promptly placed back into the closet. I did purchase more maternity clothes, but did so through a secondhand shop. Now that our third child is 7 months I have given away my maternity clothes, but still have nursing tops. I would say even with these life changes I purchased what I actually needed and still maintained a minimized wardrobe.

Now the temptation would be once you decluttered all the clothes that don’t “bring you joy”, would be to replace it with “better” clothes. My problem with clothes is I love something on the hanger or other people, but not so much on me. Then I almost force it to work on me, I’ll tell myself “Well if I lost a couple pounds”, or “this will be great when it snows” (I live in Texas, there is no snow). I really do have to watch my self-talk because I can talk myself into anything. I am my own worst salesman. Now before I buy something I make myself wait a few days. Also, I think about what I actually need before shopping for it. Just being aware of what I own has helped me from shopping mindlessly. And pausing to ask myself why I “need” this item now has helped me recognize when I’m starting to feel anxious, depressed or stressed. There are better (and cheaper) ways to reduce anxiety and stress that are just as effective as shopping.

I have really enjoyed minimizing and will be writing more on this topic. Now to get my kids to minimize their belongings…..