The other day, we talked about Simplifying Your Beauty and how taking just a few minutes in the morning to add some makeup can make you feel better about yourself, raise your self esteem, and boost your confidence. Not to mention, it shows others that you respect yourself, and as a result, they are likely to treat you better.

The same can be said of what you choose to wear.

Kristen from The Together Act blog is doing a 31 Day Challenge on 31 Days of Simple Style and I intend to read all of them and learn from them.

I especially loved her post on home clothes. As someone who works from home and spends a lot of time there, I felt that this was an important post for me to read.

So let’s talk about simplifying your closet so that what you have in there is all stuff you love and that looks good on you. You might want to go back and read or re-read my post on the KonMari method: Simplifying Your Space.

Now I’m not going into style as Kristen does; she’s the expert on that, not me.

But I am going to talk about a few ways that we can give more thought to the clothes we wear and how we wear them.

There is a big trend going around now called the capsule wardrobe. As I understand it, this is an idea that those in the fashion industry have known about for a long time, but it was recently brought to the public’s attention by Caroline from Unfancy.

According to Caroline, a capsule wardrobe is “The practice of keeping a small number of useful clothes in your closet and remixing them each season.”

The recommended number of pieces is typically 37; I’m not sure why. This would include not only pants, jeans, shirts, and dresses, but also footwear and outer wear. I don’t see how that would work, but if you want to find out more, check out my Pinterest board. A lot of people are making it work and loving it.

I do have to say that I once worked with a young woman from Europe who I thought was incredibly chic and sophisticated. She always dressed so well. We were both in our early 20’s at the time, but she dressed like an older woman yet pulled it off.

At some point I noticed that she really had very few clothes. I would see the same pieces over and over again. What made it work was that they were very, very high quality and she stayed within a neutral palette. I’ve never forgotten that. (Even though most of my clothes come from Costco!)

Here are a couple of perhaps easier ideas to help you simplify your closet, from my daughters:

• Sarah, my older daughter, wears scrubs at work but when she is home, she is most often wearing black leggings, a tank top and a shirt or sweater layered over the tank. Boots when it’c cold, flip flops when it’s not.
• Caitlin, my youngest, wears leggings and jeans with her tops. She rarely layers, but limits her wardrobe to 3 colors: black, white, and grey. It may sound boring, but it’s not.

Do you have a capsule wardrobe? What do you think about it?

Be sure to leave a comment and share!