February 26, 2008

• Out with the old

  Working the weird hours that I do has left me unable to get entirely unpacked for the past 3 months.  It’s just that I have to sleep at weird hours, and so i have to ensure that I’m out cold by a certain time, or my body resets as though it had gotten sleep the previous night.  However, thanks to certain events, I had a 4-day weekend this weekend, So I have been using the time to get some things done.

  One of the biggest things was unpacking the boxes of clothing and other things that were just sitting in a room.  Some of it was Army related, but a lot of it was just clothing.  Going through it, I decided that there were things that I really didn’t need, so I set those aside for donation to the Salvation Army.  Some stuff was pretty obvious (doesn’t fit, never fit, can’t wear this in normal society, etc.), and there were things that I knew that I was going to get rid of, but never got around to.  The hard part was the things that were in the “questionable” category; the question being “Do I ever actually wear this, have I worn this recently, or will I ever wear this?”  It’s hard, because I don’t really care about fashion and trends, and I’m not someone to only wear something once, so it’s not like I keep track of what I wear.  In order to help me answer this question, I am enlisting a system talked about in the book, “A Perfect Mess“.  When talked about in the book, it is used on files, but this works just the same.

  Here’s how it works.  You hang up all of your clothing (in sections for shirts, pants, etc).   Whenever you take something out of the closet, you have to pull from the right side (technically, you can take whatever shirt you want).  When you return stuff, you put it on the left side of the section.   Now, if the shirt that is on the right is one that you can’t or don’t want to wear, you skip it, and go to the next item.  Over time, the most used items will continuously be moved to the left, while the least used items will make their way, and probably remain, on the right side.  Of course, there will be clothing that isn’t worn as much, but is perfectly fine (such as suits, tuxedos, etc.).  After a while, you’ll notice that shirt or pants that you NEVER seem to wear, and you can mark that for the donation pile.

  Black 6, out.

  • 1:26 pm
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