Working on the Wardrobe

I love clothes, I admit it. I love the huge variety of colors and textures - silks and cottons; crunchy knits and soft rayons; denims and velvets....you name it, I love it. I always have. I love looking through magazines to get ideas, and then shopping for things I like, usually spending a fraction of what I saw in the magazines. And I have proof. A packed closet filled with amazing (or at least what I think is amazing) clothes for any occasion.

Each season I go through my closet and evaluate what's in there. I re-organize things and purge items when necessary. This past month while I've been off, I've purged quite a few items from my closet. It's amazing, really. Considering how packed it still is and how many things I donated...where did all of those things fit into that crammed-full closet?? I've also washed, ironed and repaired any items that were in need of it. So now, having done the prep work, I've been thinking about what I might want to look for while shopping for fall clothes.

Before shopping, I thought I'd look through and put some outfits together with the things I already own. You know, come up with some different pairings - things I haven't tried together before, including jewelry and scarves - and make notes and take photos so I'd remember them later. I kept thinking about it last night and was excited to get an early start on it this morning.

Oh.My.GOSH. I'd only been working on it for a little over an hour when I realized that, this one task could - and probably would - take me several days to complete, and by the end, I'd be totally exhausted. Literally. How do I know this? In just a little over an hour's time, I came up with 44 different outfits ... and I hadn't even gone through one quarter of the possibilities that were in that closet.

Needless to say, I decided that several days of doing just this one thing was completely out of the question. I did, however, put together some really nice outfits that I really like! I thought that maybe once a month I'd go through and put together five or six outfits so that I'm not overwhelmed by trying to do it all at once. One benefit from working on this task is that I realized I don't really *need* any new fall clothes. That said, I know that I'll probably pick up an item or two, but going through my wardrobe now certainly helped me realize that I already have hundreds upon hundreds of choices. I think I'll mostly look at buying a few accessories and, later when it gets a bit cooler, probably some heavier sweaters since I don't really have many of those. In the meantime, here are just a couple of things I came up with:(It's kind of hard to tell, but the pants are dark brown)I've had this leopard print scarf forever. I bought it at a vintage clothing store about 25 years ago.)I just love these colors together! It just looks like fall!I love these soft grays and lavender together... That's it for now. My mind is still reeling with the myriad possibilities!