Spring Cleaning

I'm going to switch gears with this post a bit and talk about clothes. Our weather here in southeast Pennsylvania finally has settled nicely into spring, so I thought it was a good time for me to get my closet ready for spring and summer.

It was about time, because for a few weeks, we had yo-yoing temperatures, where several days would be in the 60s and 70s, and then things would go crashing back to the 40s. Due to the schizophrenic weather patterns, I needed to pull out my warm-weather clothes ahead of time, without putting anything else away. My closet was overflowing with all of my clothes.

I had already gone through my spring/summer clothes a few weeks back, when the need for them first came up. These are the criteria I used to determine whether clothes should stay or go:

• Which clothes fit? Thankfully, after losing more than 25 pounds on Weight Watchers, my problem was clothes that fit too big, but if you find clothes that feel too small, of course you would get rid of them as well.
• Which clothes have problems? Assess whether these clothes can be saved or not. You may be able to take clothes with busted zippers or loose or missing buttons to a tailor (or fix them yourself), but a shirt that has a hole in a prominent place after losing a battle with a bra hook in the washing machine will probably need to be scrapped.
• Which clothes best reflect me now? Consider your likes and dislikes when it comes to fashion, and think about whether those preferences have changed since last year. Don't be afraid to donate any clothes that you can't see yourself wearing anymore. Properly-fitting clothes that you find stylish are indispensable to positive body image as someone losing weight, in my opinion.
  

I would do the same thing for my shoes and clothes. After going through my warm-weather clothes and hanging them up, I also edited my winter clothes in the same manner, so there will be less work when the temperatures start to dip at the end of the year.

What do you do with the clothes you no longer want? I like to take them to my local thrift shop, but you could also donate professional clothes to organizations like Dress for Success (for women) and Career Gear (for men). I was lucky enough to have worked for the past 2 years at a place where I could wear jeans every day, so I don't really have business gear to give away.