How to detox your wardrobe: Get real, face your demons, be ruthless

Got a wardrobe stuffed to the gills, but nothing to wear? It might be time for a wardrobe detox, says image consultant Aoife Dunican of @thestylebob. That expensive dress you never wore, the trousers now too small, the impulse buys that just don’t suit? A wardrobe detox means facing your demons all at once. “It gets nasty before it gets better,” says Dunican. If you don’t detox your wardrobe, you’ll end up buying things you don’t need and feeling continuously guilted by your mistakes, she says.

Analyse

The first step to detoxing your wardrobe is to do a lifestyle analysis, says Dunican. If you have sequins and feathers aplenty, but nothing for the school run, there is an imbalance. For work from home-ers, a wardrobe skewed towards office wear needs to change.

Examine your lifestyle and make sure your wardrobe reflects it, says Dunican. Perhaps you spend a day or two in the office now, but the rest of the time on Zoom. You have a few nights out, but a daily school run. Follow the golden rule of five, says Dunican. “You should ideally have five outfits for every segment of your lifestyle. I do a lot of webinars, so I have five red Zoom tops for those,” she says.

Get real about your life. The hardest items to buy are smart-casual clothes, Dunican says. “It’s the middle ground that takes a bit of creativity. If I see feathers and a pair of good navy trousers, I’ll be drawn to the feathers, but I know I have enough of that stuff.”

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Categorise

Dresses – how many of them have you got? Or what about neckties? To detox your wardrobe, take every item in a category out and rate it one to 10. “If you’ve just bought another dress and it’s lovely and it’s fine, but it is number seven or eight on your list, return it,” says Dunican. “This rating system stops you in your tracks from adding more, because you shouldn’t be adding items that only come in at 10 or 11 on your list. It’s obscene.”

Ditch the guilt

The stuff that no longer fits, if you are not ready to part with it, at least remove it from your eye line. “The problem with clothes you no longer fit into is that they remind you every day that you no longer fit into them. There’s a terrible guilt attached,” says Dunican. Put these items in another room.

Dry clean or mend anything that needs it. Items you won’t wear again can be sold online or donated.

Mind the gaps

Once you’ve examined your lifestyle and cleansed your wardrobe, it’s time to spot the gaps. If you have too many pairs of jeans but no tops, that’s a gap. “This saves you a mass of money because you are not shopping aimlessly,” says Dunican. “You now have a succinct shopping list for your gaps.”

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Don’t buy ‘handy things’

Another stripy top, pair of leggings or a fleece? Stop the madness. “I’m seeing way too many ‘handy things’ in wardrobes – too many,” says Dunican. “People are buying handy things because they went into town and saw nothing else so they just bought another Breton top or a pair of Lulus to scratch the itch. They are not cheap.” Stop buying “handy things”. Only buy to fill a gap.