How ‘Closet Clearing’ empowers you from season to season!
Let go and make space for the NEW with 5 steps to your ‘Closet Clarity’
Another summer slips slowly away as dusk settles in a little earlier each day. I love summer and I hate to see it go. I lament letting go of long sunny days, salty swims in the Pacific, and bbq’s on my roof deck overlooking what’s left of the Ballona Wetlands in the Los Angeles Basin. That’s when I remind myself that it is time for ‘Closet Clearing’ – the one empowering self-practice I enjoy from season to season!
Change blows fall breezes right across the sands, bidding adieu to laughing children with their buckets and shovels, the brawny brown volleyball players and fair weather surfers. I then think of what will come to pass as the season ushers itself in like an elderly chaperone checking his watch. Fall forward. Time to rearrange the deck chairs. Put away the flip flops, beach umbrellas, string bikinis to make way for pumpkins, hot soup and wooly sweaters.
How ‘Closet Clearing’ empowers you from season to season!
They say we don’t really have seasons here in California, but I disagree. Growing up as a native here in Los Angeles, I’ve always felt the seasons change by the clothes I chose to wear. “Back to School” was my favorite time to go shopping. My mother would buy me new clothes even though I wore a uniform! She said it was because I took such good care of them. I held onto clothes that were outdated. There’s something about letting go of my summer routines and favorite things that left me feeling lonesome. Deep down, I know that clearing my closet is the best way to get over my self-pity, even if I could put it off until late September. Still, I’d hold onto my summer skirts as long as possible until I felt the autumn chill and wonder just where is my rust colored cashmere sweater?
As I search for something snuggly to wear, excitement stirs inside of me and I soar into my fall fashions like a pelican diving for dinner. I throw open my closet and start laying my hanging clothes out in piles on my bed. One pile for Goodwill with things I never really wore. I resolve my favorite mermaid T-shirt with coffee spills has to go. They’ll be yet another one next year! The next pile stacked high on the bed displays clothes I still covet. Some I may wear year after year because those are things I may never find again. Stacks of shorts, skimpy tops, white lace dresses and hangers are readied to move to the wardrobe closet in my garage. Down I go to retrieve the things I held onto from last year. Unzipping the plastic wardrobe I smile. Those dresses, pant suits and sweaters I love, in the earthy harvest colors of fall, greet me like dear old friends and I’m in! Scooping up armloads of clothing on hangers, back up the stairs to my closet I go, placing them carefully in a row. I’m reborn. All of a sudden I have new things to wear and the lost lonely feeling of letting go becomes one endless summer after all.
Out of Season – Out of Mind – Out of Style:
1.) Inner Prep for Outer Steps: Be honest with yourself and assess your closet for things you don’t wear
2.) Scan & Sort: Gather your tools of the trade: Hangers, Boxes, Garbage Bags & a Sharpie
3.) Segregate: Remove pieces that you’d love to wear ~ but don’t fit or need mending
4.) Relocate: Place in separate pile for “Sentimental & Out of Season” items. Take pictures of them and/or move to another closet or store in watertight containers
5.) Donate to your children, housekeeper, nanny, babysitter, student, friend, assistant. or favorite charity! Feel good about giving and collect a tax receipt too!
RETRO FLASHBACK! DREAM WARDROBE & CLOSET FUN IS A PART OF DAILY SELF-LOVE!
Lorelei Shellist, author of “Runway RunAway: A Backstage Pass to Fashion, Romance and Rock ‘n Roll,” is a Speaker, Host, Model and founder of Fashion Icon Archetypes™ Personality Programs, an Image Consultant & Inner Beauty Empowerment Coach. MA Spiritual Psychology, and Consciousness Health & Healing from University of Santa Monica. Lorelei coaches Executives,Women, At-Risk Teens and Women in Prison.
