Hello hello everyone,

Ah, the summer is almost over and while I will miss the sunshine filled mornings, juicy watermelons you gotta eat over the sink, and the smell of saltwater and sunscreen, I'm looking forward to the season change. When the winds start changing, I know it's time to go to storage and pull out my fall wardrobe. But, before I put anything out, I take this time to clean my closet, organize, repair, and declutter my summer clothes in just 4 simple steps. Let's get into it. 

Clean your closet 

This is the best time to clean out your closet since you are rotating everything out anyway. Dust those shelves, vacuum those nooks and crannies, and throw away any broken hangers (mine always break, anyone else??). Begin this process with a shiny new wardrobe, it's starting to feel better already. 

Organize 

Fold your items in categories, seems silly since they are getting put away but it will help for the decluttering section of this process. Once you've got pants in one area, tops in another-maybe even separate those even further into tanks, blouses, long sleeves, etc., you can evaluate what got use and what didn't. 

Repair and Launder 

Anything that needs some stitching, now is the time. Reattach those buttons, quick stitch that hemline on those pants you haven't gotten around to yet. Give your future self a gift by taking care of the small things now so when you go to pull it out of storage again it's ready to wear. 

And it's a good idea to launder your clothing before storing them away. It helps combat that musty smell, moths won't be attracted to clean clothing, and you are once again, saving your future self a step in the wardrobe rotation process. Bonus tip: lavender is great at repelling moths so throw a mesh bag of some in there and your clothes will end up smelling nice as an added bonus. 

Declutter 

Dun dun dunnnnn. I have written many a blogs about decluttering but this time I'm going to approach this in a different way. Because we are thoughtful consumers, we also need to be thoughtful declutteres. Those poor thrift shops are drowning in items they can't do anything with, then those items get sold to textile recyclers for almost nothing, to then be shipped off to the global south where our unwanted goods become someone else's problem (and the planet's!). 

In order to change this, we need to change the root which are the greedy fast fashion companies that produce at a rate that no one can keep up with stylistically, financially, or sustainably. While that may not totally be in our control, we will do what we can control which is with our wallets and closets. 

You're probably asking yourself, ok Dre, got it, but what now? When you are considering getting rid of an item ask yourself...

• Could I gift this to someone who I know would love it?  

• Could I consign this item and make some cash for something even better? Cough cough were over here! 

• Does this item just need to marinate a little while longer in my closet? *soon there will be a whole blog post about this.

• Can personalizing it make it more special to me?

• Could this become good scrap fabric for future projects? Good for things with stains, items that no longer fit, anything really you know you can't sell because of condition. 

If you have taken anything away from this blog post, let it be this: we are in our slow girl era. Slow in what we shop, slow in our style evolution, slow in what we get rid of, and enjoying it. 

That's all for this time, TTFN

Dre