As I go into the 4th season of Project 333, I’ve decided to get well acquainted with the decision process, thoughts, lessons and introduce a challenge or two to spice things up a bit. There’s nothing like a bit of discomfort to get us out of our ruts and learning some more about ourselves.
For new readers, I’ve taken part in a challenge to wear 33 items for 3 months, including shoes and accessories. I’ve been doing this for 4 consecutive seasons, since October 2012, and informally since July 2012 before that, so I have been dressing with less for a year now. It’s become a way of life for me. More details about the challenge can be found on the Project 333 website.
I have a few posts lined up on the topic, and am looking forward to delving deeper.
In the first post, I took photographs of EVERY.SINGLE.ITEM I own. Pyjamas, bags, jewellery, everything. I’ll save you the joy of looking at pictures of my underwear though. That stuff belongs firmly in my dresser ;)
I counted and categorised. I made a detailed spreadsheet. I colour coded and analysed. All inspired by the awesome Debbie Roes at Recovering Shopaholic (check her out, she’s good!). Specifically, this post.
Next, I want to look at how many items have made it into seasonal selections and how many haven’t, across all 4 seasons of Project 333. I’ll also break it down into the items I’ve worn most frequently, and those that haven’t seen much light.
You in?
Let’s get started.
Total number of items 1st July 2013: 191
If I combine all the collages from part 1, into one mega collage, it looks like this:
Ok, so that isn’t the best photo, but all those individual collages can be seen here. I just wanted to get an overall feel of my entire wardrobe. Overwhelmed yet? No? ok good!
So, to do this logically, I will go from general to details. So as not to confuse anyone, including myself.
Total number of items owned, 1st July 2013: 191
That number includes shoes, bags, jewellery, pyjamas, workout gear and all regular clothing.
Total number of items owned, that count for Project 333: 130
Total number worn from Seasons 1-4 : 125
Total number included in Seasons 1-4 of Project 333: 78
The higher figure includes all items not included in the count for the project: workout gear, pyjamas, jewellery and some bags.
This means that I have worn (or selected to wear) 65% of my total wardrobe in the last year, and selected 60% of eligible items to be included in Project 333.
This surprises me, as 40% of my “eligible” wardrobe has not been selected for Project 333 for 4 consecutive seasons.
This is out of choice. Not because I didn’t have options. I chose to select the items I loved out of the massive pile, and 40% didn’t make the cut for various reasons. I preferred my trusted items. I developed a colour palette that works for me in colours that suit me. I wore my favourite pieces a lot. It felt good.
It still feels good to have less to choose from.
I decided to make yet another spreadsheet, to see the distribution of items across seasons. There was significant overlap. See the full table here: Project 333 Season lists , but this is what it looks like:
Number of items in all 4 seasons: 8
Number of items in 3 seasons: 17
Number of items in 2 seasons: 17
Number of items in 1 season: 36
Total unique items: 78
Most of the items that only occur in one season are experimental - an attempt to get them into daylight, to see if I love them or not. That’s certainly the case for Season 4, as I decided to give my usual items a rest and test drive all those pesky tanks that I had stacked in the box, plus some new trousers/skirts etc. Debbie came up with a great term for these: wardrobe benchwarmers
Remember, I had 130 eligible P333 items as of 1st July, and to date only 78 of them have been selected. What to do with the remaining 52?
Well, I went through all of my clothing, made ruthless decisions based on various factors outlined in Part 1. Counting them again, I now have 108 items eligible for Project 333.
Now there are 30 remaining that are eligible, but have not been selected. I will be thinking hard about what to do with these items, as I won’t have worn them for over a year once I finish Season 4...
Over to you
Do you have favourite items that you keep returning to? What do you do with the rest? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to subscribe to my posts by RSS or follow me on Twitter
Excellent post, Linda! Thanks for linking up to my posts on wardrobe tracking and "wardrobe benchwarmers." I'm glad my thoughts and practices have been useful for you!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading about your year-long experience with Project 333 and seeing your numbers. So it seems that we both have quite a few "benchwarmers" to consider now. I committed to making a decision on my 40+ items by the end of August. I've already thrown quite a few into the consign/donate pile, but some of the others baffle me.
Part of why I didn't enter into Project 333 again right away is that I sometimes need to actually wear a garment before I can decide whether or not to keep it. So I've been pushing myself to wear the remaining benchwarmers. With some of them, even just putting the item on is enough to tell me it's time for it to go, but I usually try to wear it for a few hours as a sort of "test drive." It feels good to be making solid decisions on the benchwarmers instead of continuing to let them hang in my closet unworn. I look forward to having dealt with all of them, and it won't take me the full year I thought it would when I first coined the term "wardrobe benchwarmers"! Good luck to you with your continued wardrobe refinement!
Thank you Debbie, and thanks for reading!
ReplyDeleteYes, there are a few that I'm not sure about, so I'm test driving some of them in this season. However, I do find myself going back to my favourites, pulling them out of the box, so this season is proving very different to the first three. I'm tracking everything I wear, so I know what I've pulled from the boxes.
I'm glad my post was interesting, after a year of the Project, things are coming up and I'm learning what I need in terms of clothing.
I agree with you on the test drive, I prefer to wear something for a few hours, a day, maybe two, just to see how it feels on. I've removed a tank top after wearing it, because it felt horrible.
I've found that a good question to ask is "would I buy this today". Often the answer is no, because it doesn't fit, feel comfortable, or suit me, then into the donate pile it goes.
Thank you, and same to you! we will get there in the end, and I plan to learn as much as possible from the journey!
Hi Linda. I found your blog at Debbie's and found your Project 333 results very interesting. I also enjoyed looking back at a few other posts as well :) Although I haven't done a Project 333 yet I'm planning to try it at the beginning of Summer (December for me in Australia).
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime I've been working on weeding out my benchwarmers ( identified by the reverse hanger method) and those that don't feel or look right after an hour or day of wear are being donated. It's not possible to tell in a store which clothes will become our favourites is it?
Hi Megan, and welcome! Thanks for stopping by!
ReplyDeleteGlad you enjoyed my post(s)!
I'm hoping this series will be helpful rather than overwhelming. Project333 has given me so much, and I'm looking forward to writing about that too.
The reverse hanger trick is a great idea, I especially like trialling benchwarmers for a bit to check whether they feel good.
You make an excellent point, it's very difficult to tell which items will be favourites from a 5 minute fitting room visit!
I love all of the work that you put into this. Recently I decided to cut my wardrobe (which is small as is) by 50%. I got my husband to join as well. I pulled out a scrap piece of paper, counted everything and determined the number of articles to get rid of. I didn't make it to 50% and ended up at 45% but my closet is so minimal now I love it.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for reading! It did take a lot of work, but I had fun doing it. it helps to get some objective data! It made me see how much of my wardrobe I'd worn, and how much I hadn't. It will definitely inform future decluttering, and hope to get to a much more minimal state than what I have now. Too much clothing is just frustrating!
ReplyDeleteGreat post. I also follow Debbie's blog, and I really like the fact that this is a close community and we can all share tips and variations. In my own challenges, I do 33 items, but do not include outerwear, jewelry, or other non-shoe accessories, because I dress very differently for my office, for court/church, and for evenings and weekends, and 33 items with accessories and outerwear proved too limiting. Like you, I have also committed to a year of Project 333, though I do 2 months at a time to address lifestyle and weather issues (in St. Louis, Missouri we will go from 102 on August 28 to anyone's guess by October 31). I started Feb 14, 2013 (too impatient to wait until 3/1) and will have my last round (6) from Jan 1-Feb 28, 2014. I plan to ditch everything I didn't like enough to wear during the year unless it's sentimental comfy stuff (fitted souvenir tees are a personal soft spot, though I don't wear them regularly), for special occasions (fancy heels, or my black strapless cocktail dress), or irreplaceable and dear (a velvet back-button top that is often a little too small but was my mother's and is so special to me). I have been tracking things on my own blog, and will catalog and analyze it all at the end - maybe giving myself a break for the month of March with no challenge, and then working with a smaller wardrobe (my gut feeling throughout this has been that 50 items per 3 months, including shoes, outerwear, and non-jewelry accessories, is probably "just right"). I start Round 4 tomorrow, when you start your round 4. Cheers!
ReplyDeleteThank you Rebecca, and welcome!
ReplyDeleteI like how everyone makes the challenge work for them, but still keeping it challenging. There are so many different approaches to this, but as long as we're learning about our habits, and needs for clothing, we're all good!
I'm going to have to look hard at everything I haven't worn in a year. Some of it I absolutely can't get rid of -my black ball gown that makes me feel like a million dollars, but don't have the events to wear it! If it's only a few of those items, I don't see the problem with it. Joy trumps suffering, I always remind myself!
Good luck with your season 4! :)