How can you love everything in your wardrobe that much more? Is it even possible?
In this video, Jill Chivers of Shop Your Wardrobe and I discuss a technique to make sure that what you buy is what you love, so that you do feel excited and inspired by your wardrobe each day.
Use the Make it an 8 or More Technique
Anything that’s in your wardrobe or is going to enter your wardrobe needs to be rated by you to at least an 8 (that’s 80% great) or higher. If you’re choosing to buy or keep clothes that you feel are only 70% or 60% (or lower) great, then this is why you’re not loving what you have to wear.
Marie Kondo in her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up says that you need to decide if a garment or accessory “brings you joy” and this works for some, but a word like “joy” can be very hard to define which is why I prefer that you stick a number on it as then it makes the decision about buying or not, about keeping or not so much easier.
Criteria for an 8 or More
What are your criteria for deciding on that rating?
Think about
- Fit
- Comfort
- Versatility
- How it co-ordinates with your existing wardrobe
- Colour and contrast
- Pattern
- Fabric
- Style Recipe
- Personality
- Scale
- How flattering it is on your body
Research shows that when we own something we put a higher value on the item than if we didn’t own it, which is why it can be harder to get rid of items once they are in your wardrobe for many of us! So you don’t want pieces coming into your wardrobe that you don’t rate highly.
Inside Your Existing Wardrobe
Ask yourself:
Would I buy this again?
This is another way to help you make decisions about your existing clothes to know how you really feel about them and how they relate to your current lifestyle and style recipe and how you really rate them!
If the answer is “NO” then ask yourself why? What is the reason that it’s not something you’d buy again? Analyse it against the list above and see if you can figure out what’s wrong with it. The more you know about what does and doesn’t work for you both physically and mentally, the better your future decisions will be.
Choice is Overwhelming and Makes Life Harder
Using this Make it an 8 Technique helps you to limit your choices which makes your brain happier! It makes the answer of either yes or no, so much easier to make.
Don’t Buy Clothes For Your Future Body
So many of us buy clothes for a future self when we’ve lost that last few kilograms, yet we have no idea how that garment will really fit when we are at that weight (if we even become that weight) and if they will even flatter us.
Don’t deny the essential beauty of your current body, learn to dress it as it is today and celebrate the life, style and person you are today with clothes that are great and pass your criteria for making it an 8 or more!
Spend some time creating and documenting outfits and seeing how you really feel in them. Download my Weekly Outfit Planner which will help you do this here.
Have you been using the Make it an 8 technique? How has it been working for you?
Further Reading
7 Reasons Why You Have a Wardrobe Full of Clothes But Nothing To Wear and What You Can Do About It
Before You Throw It All Out for a Minimalist Wardrobe Read This
Linking Up toHigh Latitude Style, Foxy Domesticside, Currently Wearing, Not Dressed as Lamb, Style Nudge, Style with a Smile
I LOVE this technique. It is SO important and yet I used to follow it loosely… ending up unhappy after shopping trips. It’s been so freeing to be extremely picky about what I buy (or keep if ordering online!).
This was such a great video for me and I am very motivated to incorporate only clothes I really love and that look great into my wardrobe. I work p/t in a well-known women’s clothing store and recently heard women telling their friends to buy unflattering items of clothing because it was on sale so size, color and shape didn’t matter. I, myself, was guilty of this (before I joined the 7 Steps program!) but now choose more selectively and carefully. I also liked the point that once you own something it is harder to let it go.
Thanks Rebecca and I’m glad that you’ve discovered some of your blind spots (and can hopefully help those women not make the same mistakes too)!
Great video! I love the question “would I buy it again?” That’s not something I had thought of before, but now looking at my wardrobe the things I don’t love I can see why – the cut/fit isn’t right – or the colour.
I can also relate to buying for the other life – in my other life I wear smart corporate type shirts/dresses and fancy evening outfits, when in reality I am a work at home mum who never needs those outfits. I think I like the classic style/structure of them and find casual clothes a bit too casual/relaxed so I don’t quite get the mix right – but hopefully I can be a bit more aware of it now.
Thanks for sharing Ali – many of us buy for a life we’d like to live but it’s not for us right now! A bad habit. Something to think about is how you can incorporate the “feel” of those clothes for the life you don’t lead, into the clothes you do wear each day.
I relate to this other life – even if I might not be happy living it, I still love the outfits.
Living your imaginary life that is way more glamorous and exciting than the real one?
An interesting video again. My only criticism would be that it focusses mainly on future purchases, not on getting more use out of what you already have in your wardrobe, as the title might imply.
A personal comment about the question “Would I buy this again?”. Interestingly this hasn’t helped me too much in the past. I sometimes have bought an item, then donated it because I never wore it, and then bought practically the exact same item again later. I think these pieces were perfect according to fit, colour, style etc., but they were actually purchases for the “other life” as you say. This goes especially for really high heels that were only “sit down shoes” but took up valuable space in my wardrobe.
We also recommend using this criteria for your existing clothes to see if you’d keep them in your wardrobe (we talk lots about shopping your wardrobe and using your existing clothing in other videos which you can find here on the blog). Given you’ve bought and thrown out and rebought similar items – have you figured out why you keep doing this? Is is imaginary life? Is it some other reason?
Yes, I definitely forget that in real life one of the most important factors for me is how practical and comfortable clothes are. Anything fussy or dificult to wear gets culled at some point. But when I stand in front of something beautiful in a shop, I seem to imagine a life that’s a little bit more glamourous.
It’s worth thinking of those clothes like works of art that you will just never wear!
Very useful advice – I do try to be more selective now, mainly because my wardrobes are full and I’m hopeless at getting rid of things that I don’t wear. I find that thinking about why I love my favourite items of clothing so much and why they work so well for me helps me to choose better. Lifestyle and bodyshape are the most important factors for me – I have lots of dresses but tend to favour separates (unless I’m on holiday) so I’m trying not to be tempted with any more! Thanks for linking up to Style With a Smile!
Emma xxx
http://www.style-splash.com
I, too, realized long ago that clothes that are just meh, less than an 8, don’t serve me. So I adopted the” love it or leave it”policy. Over time, I’ve noticed that the winning workhorses in my closet are the ones that made an immediate, positive impression in the dressing room. So if I don’t feel that way immediately about any garment I try on, it doesn’t come home with me. There have been stretches of YEARS of not updating my wardrobe because I just couldn’t find items that met that criteria. Plus, my other rule is that it must work with at least three other garments or I have to be willing to make up the difference with further additions that have to meet the same criteria. I still occasionally make a mistake, but not nearly as many as I once did.
I also found it helpful to consider the value of the space an item will occupy since storage space is generally finite even for those with much larger wardrobes and budgets. This makes it much easier to remove unproductive items through resale or donation.