Hi free birds! 🐦 I would like to keep calling you that… if you don’t mind? 😆 After all, we are all going to be free like a bird through simplifying our life! So we can fly… be spontaneous for exciting life opportunities, feeling light to get up an go! Hey Its Emi. I would like to report to you that…
my first ever online event was such a blast!!!
✨🎉🥳🎉✨
I got to talk to participants who actively look for ways to declutter their space…which was what I wanted to do for long time! Whooo! 🎉 I had such a blessing that they are very open to share their stories, motivation, struggles or even vulnerabilities through process of minimalism. Was a great joy to share my skills and experience to great group of people who actively engaged the course! 🙏🥰 I can’t wait to plan my second event! I will keep you posted, through “Event” section on top of the blog page.
Moving on to today’s topic… let’s continue to talk about revolutionising wardrobe! This time, how about we get to the detailed life examples… to brain storm:
What kind of clothes are serving you, and which are not? 👕
My dear friend… let’s call him G, he kindly shared photos of clothes that he got rid of. He also sent me the following message along side of his big list of “bye bye” 👋clothing items:
Personally this excites me! Because from knowing my friend G, I know he put fair amount of emotional attachment to things he own. He could recall the memories that goes with each items. When he explaining to people, we can see the emotion and excitement he brings into his story from his past life! He shared with me that his family home where he grew up tended to be cluttered. This used to frustrate him. I do not know if G inherit the tendency to hold on to big amount of item or not in his current place. However, often it is the case that children grew up with household with overwhelming amount of clutter tend to recreate this pattern in their layer adult life. I am not saying this is what my friend G going through. What I mean to emphasise is that parting ways of thing often takes lot of mental process for many people… it comes with so much realisations, and learning moments! I really appreciate G sharing what he has been working with! Thank you G! 😁
I also asked him the following questions for his process:
- Why are you getting rid of these clothes? Issue with size? not comfortable? Colour not suit you?…
- Did these clothes make you feel confident when you wear them?
- What kind of thing you DID kept? Any shared features for them?
- What kind of social scene does your wardrobe allow you to go?
- How you feel after you get rid of them? Do you still find yourself thinking about these clothes?
Alongside with images of clothing, he answered several of my above questions! (Thank you G!🙏) I believe the following detailed examples and reasoning can be useful for lots of us…
💪G’s recent wardrobe decluttering:
Short sleeve jumper
- 👍loved the style, wanted to wear
- 👎 difficult to wear when its too cold or warm. Only suit weather that we don’t have too often in Melbourne.
Vest
- 👍from Korea, like the design.
- 👎never found anything that work to wear underneath
University Jumper
- 👍 sentimental value. (8years since left Uni). “It’s super comfy.”
- 👎 prefer not to wear in public anymore, and have non-school related jumper anyway.
Ankle pants from Hong Kong
- 👍Comfortable
- 👎 got a cut on the front, and feel like it is not a good look.
- 👎 it is not a track pants, but often mistaken as so. (Looks casual)
Ripped pants
- 👍 like the style
- 👎 issue with all four season. Material is too thick. Too hot in summer. However, too cold in winter, autumn because of the ripped hole.
Half pants
- 👍 one of his favourite
- 👎 there is a hole on it, which he kept sewing up. It kept opening up.
- Decided to keep it until find another pair, but it’s been months and he has forgotten about them.
Track pants
- 👎 not comfortable at all!
- 👎 no belt loops, so tend to go down, when he sit down and stand up, make him feel self conscious
- “Anxious… for some reason i kept them.” 🤷🏻♂️
To sun up from G’s example list here… we can part ways 👋with clothings fall into this following categories:
- Clothes that are old, in bad condition. 🪡You might think you will repair it… but would you ever?
- Not comfortable, things makes you self conscious. Don’t let clothes to ruin your day! 💔
- Not suitable to social scene that you attend or want to go anymore. 🤡
- Hard to wear.😬 Poor mix and match, not versatile.
rather than that, I would like these 🎖️ELITE BEST 🎖️clothes in my wardrobe:
- Versatile👍, not requiring me to think too much to find matching items.
- Comfortable to wear😉, no stress for moving around during the day.
- Good quality and timeless pieces 🧥(Not trendy)
- Items that accentuates the best feature of you. 💎
- Items that helps present myself in the best ways in majority of social scene I go. 🚀
- That makes your day bright and shiny, bring you happiness! 😆
…Can you think of any clothes that you can potentially get rid of? Maybe in your head there are some items popped up while you reading this post. Are you comfortable to say bye to them? Is there any factors stopping you to do it?
For example… we may struggle to decide to get rid of these unfortunate clothings because:
- They were expensive?
- Still good in condition?
- In trend, and trying to not missing out what people are wearing (but does it suit you?)
Well, what I want to say to you for these reasons that holding you back is…
Do not let things take control of you and your day… Let them serve you!
Is finding a route to get rid of thing also an issue? For example… you feel wrong to shove a perfectly good condition clothes under a rubbish shoots? Or, you want to see if your friends and family members would like to adopt these clothes from you? Well… it’s very nice if they do really love these items. However, higher chances are they already have their big amount of things, and they also do not need them. Let’s take responsibilities of your possessions… and not to put the burden on others.
Try to sell these items are of course, a great way to go! But often what I found is, it’s never worth the effort. It is time consuming, and you will need to take your energy in negotiating terms and arrange handing over. (For example, Facebook market place, other fashion goods second hand selling apps…) unless it is a very valuable thing, I’d say…
Instead, would you like to donate them? The bins at the left 👈, “Give Your Clothes A Second life” is located in most of the Melbourne suburb, often around train station. (If you do not live in Melbourne Australis), I am sure you can search for your local second hand donation destinations.
But importantly…
LET’S NOT DUMP 🚫🙅our unwanted things like trashes around the bin!!
The sole purpose for you to let go of things with help of the organisation is to help people. Our closet might be tidied after get rid of things. But is it okay to let other people to deal with a cluttered unpleasant messiness? It is a destruction of community, so no. Let’s do our part to make the process of handing over things easier! We should check what is the requirement we need to follow… such as what kinds of thing they accept? What timing to use the bin? Condition of thing?
My friend G also shared with me with this following decision he made for his wardrobe:
1 IN, 1 OUT Principle 👉
Way to go G! It is great to keep track of what we have in wardrobe, and with “*1 in 1 out principle”…we can defeat impulsive shopping! (* buy one thing, get rid of one so amounts of items you possess do not increase) and often the case is… when you do through thinking and research for obtain a new item, you even replace with more than one things!
The following is an example of what I just described… this was part of the key note I shared during my online event:
Through each attempt of decluttering, we polish our sense of “what matter to me”. And that, personally is the best part I enjoy about practicing minimalism. Because… this is my life, I want to have clear intentions when engage with daily activities. We can only count on ourself for doing that.
Next time I will talk about… “minimalism and camping” ⛺️🌲😌 I enjoyed so much with my recent trip to go camp in the nature. Me and my partner packed minimal things… was so enjoyable.
I will see you next time, free birds! 🐦
Minimal Lifestyle. 
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