While it’s safe to say that most of us have more clothes than we truly need, we can still have a hard time letting go of these garments when spring cleaning rolls around.
I am not afraid to admit I am guilty of this. I wouldn’t say I’m any sort of obsessive collector. I simply find letting go of clothing to feel like shedding my former identity.
Sometimes we’re letting go of items because we’ve grown out of them of physically, but more often than not it’s because we’ve grown out of them mentally and emotionally.
When I take a peek in my drawers, there are stacks of T-shirts resting in a pile that I defend keeping by saying they’re shirts I’ll wear to bed, from shirts with sorority embroidered details to others with state champion written across the chest from high school show choir.
Will I likely ever sleep in each of these 20-something T-shirts? The answer is obviously no, but the ever-so-small hoarder in me finds a tie to these different points in life making me want to hold on tight to these garments. These are the clothes that ignite a smile when I find them hidden away under the items in my closet that I do actually wear.
Other times it’s hard letting go of items I used to wear all the time. Just like the taste buds on your tongue change and find new flavors appealing, the same seems to happen with our gravitation toward different styles.
The electric blue Ugg boots I purchased all by myself in eighth grade stuck around much longer than they needed to simply because it was my first big investment as a child.
Now when I think about walking around school in shoes that looked like Smurf slippers, I can’t help but cringe. However, yet again, before I donated them, whenever I’d open an old shoebox and find them, I couldn't help but smile or even laugh a little.
Most of our style choices in middle school were at times questionable, if not totally horrific. However it’s pieces like this, which remind us how different we once were weeks, months and years before, when that garment in your closet was still so relevant.
It may make us red with embarrassment, we should be ashamed of what we used to wear. We declare, and always have, our identity through the different pieces of clothing that have come and gone as staples in our closets.
In a way, the clothes we’ve rotated in and out of our lives create a scrapbook. On the page marked with my middle school memories we’ll see those electric blue Uggs, a hot pink Hollister polo and a golden bow headband — yes, all worn together.
If I flipped to the chapter on my college years, I’d find the knit red power dress I wore to interviews and job fairs alike and black leather slides I wore everywhere from my semester spent in Florence, Italy, to my final weeks in Bloomington. There would also be a Theta cycling sweatshirt I wore when our bike team won the 2018 Little 500 women’s race.
I know I can’t hold on to every piece of clothing that has brought me joy. It’s bittersweet as I toss out old blouses and shoes. What makes it better is to wonder what will sit in my closet in a decade and bring new sentiments and memories into focus.
