Your Weekend Project: Edit Your Wardrobe to Just 10 Essential Pieces

I have only good memories of walk-in closets, except for the time I was rummaging around in the back of one–and suddenly came across a high-top sneaker with two kittens sitting in it.

It was a charming scene really, with one tiny kitten gnawing on a shoelace and the other batting at his brother with a fuzzy paw, unless you stopped to consider the cold facts of the situation. My closet was so stuffed with clothing that I hadn’t noticed when my cat gave birth to a litter in there several weeks earlier.

How do closets get so overcrowded? How does a pair of blue jeans you had in college manage to surreptitiously elude the Salvation Army dragnet for decades to follow you as you move across the country, back and forth and back again, to each new walk-in closet?

Yet. When I remodeled my house last year, No. 1 on my wish list was a walk-in closet. Less than nine months later, the closet is already a shambles. By last week, every time I tried to walk in, a stray shoe would trip me. The sleeves from blouses were twining themselves, anaconda style, around my neck.

It was time to clean out the closet, drastically and once-and-for-all. I was sick of feeling as if my clothes owned me. I came up with a new strategy: Define the season’s wardrobe as minimally as possible–I pared down to 10 pieces–and put everything else into organized deep storage. I know 10 pieces sounds pretty draconian. But if you look at a weather map, you’ll see most of us live in climates defined by three-month stretches that don’t vary that much. And more minimal is always more peaceful.

My 10 essential pieces include jeans, black pants, khaki pants, a knit dress, a pencil skirt, two collared shirts, a cardigan, a blazer, and a white T-shirt. Here’s how to pare down your closet to your own personal 10 essential pieces.

Have you ever whittled your wardrobe to a few key items? Tell us about it in the Comments section below.

Photography by Zoe Quittner (except for featured image of coat rack, courtesy of Ambivalenz).