If you were told you had to pack up your life in 3 suitcases how would you choose what stays and what goes? I was faced with that decision earlier this year when I packed up my life to move from Chicago to Queretaro. After pulling everything out from my closet and touching and looking through each piece, I realized not everything needed to be included in my limited packing space. So how can one decide what is essential in their closet?
My process to narrow down my essential pieces came down to three categories: wearabilty based on weather, flexibility to match with different items, and comfortable favorites.
Coming from Chicago, a place where we experience every extreme weather change, I had a variety of clothes for every season. However I knew that Querétaro, my new home, is a place with neutral climate that doesn’t experience such extreme weather changes.
So I began to make a pile of winter clothes and I eventually realized I had 6 different jean jackets. How could I have possibly accumulated 6 of basically the same jacket over all these years? I am clearly a fan of jean jackets, but is it really necessary for my closet to include more than 1 of the same piece?
Absolutely not, so I chose my favorite jean jacket, the one of the best quality and the most flexible to pair with multiple outfits.
When looking through your closet, imagine a limited amount of space in a suitcase and how you would fill it. Do you use heels every day for work? If the answer is no then reevaluate why you continue to buy heels or keep heels that only gather dust in your closet. By feeling and reviewing each piece in our closet we may discover that we buy in patterns that are unnecessary, wasteful and possibly harmful to our environment.
Once I discovered what was essential from my closet my next job was to figure out how to responsibly get rid of the items I no longer needed. Most of the items went to a friend’s closet where they would provide it with a whole new life, other pieces were donated to charities and others were sold online.
Many clothing items have an eternal lifetime on this planet, so if it no longer fits into our suitcase it's our responsibility to find it a home in someone else’s.
Crystal Medina
IG: Crystal_Medinaaa
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