HOW TO CREATE A CAPSULE WARDROBE

Last week I wrote about how to change your spending habits and touched a little on the fact that I've been reading about minimalism recently. As part of my experimenting with minimalism, I thought doing a capsule wardrobe would be really helpful (and also super fun). So now that I've done mine, I thought I'd give you some tips and advice for you to try it out yourself.

What is a capsule wardrobe?
A capsule wardrobe is a collection of maybe 40 (but the amount of entirely up to you) items of clothing that are your absolute favourites in your wardrobe for the current season - bonus points if they all kind of match and can be interchanged and combined in different ways. The point is that it saves you time when picking things to wear and you avoid having things in your wardrobe that don't look that great/you don't really love that much. The rest of your clothes for other seasons can just be stored somewhere else.

So let's do this...

1. Decide what you want your capsule wardrobe to look like. Figure out what kind of clothes you wear all the time - for me, I needed smart casual things for college, and plenty of things for nights out. Also, decide on a general colour theme (mine ended up with lots of exceptions, so don't think you have to be super strict with this).

2. Start by taking EVERYTHING out of your wardrobe - shoes, clothes, bags, everything. Sort them into three piles - things to put in your capsule wardrobe (things that fit and suit your current style/season), things that you still like but want to store away (things that fit but don't suit the season), and things to throw/sell/donate.

3. Make sure that in your capsule wardrobe you have jackets, tops, trousers, skirts, dresses, shoes, bags, etc - essentially, make sure you have a complete wardrobe. Also, if you have more than 40(ish) items, try and condense this down. Obviously, the amount of clothes you have in your capsule wardrobe is entirely up to you, but 40 seems to be a nice middle ground - not to many that you can never decide what to wear, and not to few that you don't have any clothes to wear.

Once you get to this stage, you can then see if there are any gaps in your wardrobe of specific items and you can do a bit of shopping to fully complete your capsule wardrobe.

4. All you need to do now is put your capsule wardrobe away, store away your other clothes, and deal with the throw/sell/donate pile.

Extra tips:
- Use wooden hangers - they take up lots of space and will physically stop you buying clothes.
- Put it in your diary - put 'need to change out capsule wardrobe' every three months in your diary. Then you know exactly when you need to switch your clothes/go shopping again.
- Avoid shopping in between - avoid adding to your capsule wardrobe during the season, you'll just end up back at square one (see my tips here on how to avoid unnecessary shopping)

I hope you're enjoying these different posts, and good luck with your capsule wardrobes! If you have any questions about it, leave a comment, drop me an email, or find me on Twitter.