Yesterday I saw something on Instagram that caught my eye:
This picture is from Mama Mandolin's instagram/blog (which I love by the way) and I was curious! She said she had decided to try the capsule wardrobe project, and that's what drew me in. What on earth is a capsule wardrobe? Of course I turned to my trusty Pinterst and found hoards of pins! Hoards I tell you!
So I went onto this fun website, Un-fancy and read up about it. Basically the jist is that you have 4 separate wardrobes, one for each season. For each season you get 37 items for your wardrobe. These 37 pieces include shoes, pants, tops, sweaters, jackets, dresses etc.
Why limit yourself I asked??!! The blog goes on to explain that often times when you have too many choices you don't know what to do or where to go, so you go with your go to jeans and white-t and you're out the door and you still feel guilty for not wearing any of your cute stuff, and you don't like what your wearing. This plan helps eliminate that because you only get so many choices, you have to get creative with your pieces! I was in right then and there! She goes on to explain some more reasons and rules and what not which you can read here, but I was already committed. Let's try this out. If I hate it fine, I don't have to keep going, but maybe it could give me the wardrobe revamp I have been needing. Just thinking about it yesterday and today totally got me excited about my clothes again! So tonight, I made a fall capsule wardrobe!!
I made some adjustments for myself which I will explain and got myself semi-set-up(which I will also explain).
This was the original bloggers fall capsule wardrobe:
I felt WAY too restricted with color if I were to go this route. I really like her style, but I need more than oxblood to get my creative color juices flowing. She encourages people to play with the idea and figure out what works for them, so that's what I did!
Here is my fall capsule wardrobe journey!!
I decided in my last class today that I wanted to do this, and that I would try to do it with only items I already have seeing as the budget it tight around these parts. The original blogger budgeted herself $1000 to get her fall capsule up to speed. I would love to buy a few new things every season, but that isn't always going to be an option. I thought trying to make do with what I had was kind of fun though, you have to get creative and decide on what you really really love to wear.
(Like my bored at school doodles??)
Next I categorized everything to see what I had in mind and then I laid it all out to see if everything meshed well (for mix and match), and make sure I could actually find everything right now lol My room is a mess.
(Bathroom lighting is the best for pictures ;) )
Here is everything all laid out! First we have dress/skirts, sweaters/jackets, tops, shoes, and bottoms and my handy list to make sure I got everything I was looking for.
I tried to do fall-ish colors, mustard ,teal, olive, grey, navy, gold, browns, plums etc. I LOVE color and I love wild and crazy patterns. The original capsule calls for neutral neutral neutral so that everything goes with everything and then you can be crazy with a purse or something. That isn't quite my style, I live for pizazz so I did lots of fun bright colors and prints.
Next I hung everything on hangers, and put them in the rearranged closet!
It doesn't look like 40 37 pieces (shh don't tell I just couldn't part with three more), but it is!
Here are my special considerations for all this to make it work for me:
-I actually have 40 pieces. I have a few sweaters I wear on the regular and if I didn't wear them in fall they won't get worn and they are great pieces so I went ahead and snuck them in. It's my first time with all this capsule craziness so I will give me a break this time!
-I have 7 different colored undershirts in there too. I am a very modest person when it comes to dress, I prefer to be covered up so an undershirt is mandatory for me almost everyday. I don't wear these shirts just by themselves so I didn't feel like this was cheating.
-I go to lots of church functions and most functions require nice dress, so I didn't include all the skirts and dresses I will wear to those in my capsule. I have a few skirts and dresses in my capsule for work and school, but Sunday dress I am ok with being a little more lax on the capsule count otherwise I would be wearing the same three pieces 1-2 times a week for the next three months. Poop, not happening.
-Underwear, bras, workout clothes, bathing suits, and pajamas are not included in this count. They are not really wardrobe pieces.
-With that being said accessories are also not in the count, so my scarf collection along with my chest of jewelry, headbands and hats and what not are not included here. Thank heavens for that because I would not be able to whittle down my jewelry list!
-I probably won't box up my out of season clothes( like the original blog) simply because I don't know where I would put them, so they will sit on the other side of the closet beckoning me to summer until I am ready to swap them out. The original blogger swaps clothes when the seasons change and sometimes uses some items for two seasons which I liked a lot.
- I have one pair of shoes missing, they are my late late late anniversary presents that I had yet to decide on ( I was promised the boots of my choice but hadn't made a decision till now, so I get them now! Yay!), they are these babies...I have to share them with you, I'm way to excited to not to...
I have never in my LIFE been an Ugg fan ( I always used to say Ugg stood for Uggly, original right??)...but alas I caved and fell in love. These babies will go just to the right of my black vans on the top shelf.
And just in case you think I have this whole capsule thing figured out and that I am on top of things I give you this... the rest of my closet right now haha
This was a fun project for me! I will update you all in about a month on how all this is going and if I have any trouble or have figured anything else out. I encourage you all to read the rest of the Un-fancy blog and read up on the capsule wardrobe. I really like this concept and I think it is just the update I need to feel good with my clothes again :) I feel like a new woman already!!
Happy Wednesday all!
Thanks so much for explaining this! I was so in the dark about what this was! Can't wait to participate! My unique pieces will be used so much more now!
ReplyDeleteI am chuckling because I am not sure I even have 37 pieces of clothing for all 4 seasons combined. I think I own a grand total of 6 pairs of footwear and that includes hiking boots, sneakers, dress shoes, rain shoes and winter boots. My husband owns more clothes than i do!
ReplyDeleteI was looking at that wardrobe- and thinking, man that is a lot of pants and shoes!
DeleteI think this is an interesting idea and a fun challenge. What I'm doing instead is just trying to eliminate all of the clothes that I don't love. I have a lot of "eh" clothes that sit on the shelf/in the closet and are only worn when I'm too lazy to do laundry. I'm trying to weed those out so that when I look at my closet, I only see things that make me feel happy and pretty.
ReplyDeleteYay! I've been doing this for years (though I can't swear to 37 pieces per season) and it means being able to get dressed in the dark without looking like I got dressed in the dark.
ReplyDeleteYou do NOT need all neutrals like the famous example. You need a consistent neutral plus a limited palette of colors. Also, never add anything without knowing what it'll go with.
I too was bored with looking at the original pin. All white, black, and red? I own a lot of black but I also have some awesome color pieces that I love!! So needless to say, I love your choices better! It's always good to have some basics in basic colors though (cami tops, basic skirt, tees)
ReplyDeleteI might try this later on however, because I'm on the hunt for maternity clothes that actually fit, I don't have enough things to wear as it is.
This is great. I was thinking about going for 40 items, too. 40 seems like a nicer number than 37 anyway. Days of the flood, years wandering in the desert, items of fall clothing . . . perfect.
ReplyDeleteWow! Thanks for this post! After reading it I went and read, like, almost the entire UnFancy blog, tore everything out of my dresser and closet, made four capsule wardrobes (mostly, the autumn one is the only one that is truly complete), and got rid of an enormous pile of stuff (seriously, I had no idea I had so many unnecessary clothes!). My style is somewhere in between yours and the original blogger's, and I too am not counting camisoles as items. They definitely fit more in the undergarment category.
ReplyDeleteOh, also, I think that if you play your cards right colorful prints can be just as mix-and-matchable as solids. Yours look great! :)
DeleteOOO! I love this too!!! My closet is so mumbo jumboed and my mom keeps telling me to organize, but this might be a fun way to actually do that finally! :) Thanks Em! :)
ReplyDeleteYay!! You found it!! Try it out and tell me how it goes! Love ya Mal Pal!!!
ReplyDelete