6 Tips to Help You Create A Capsule Wardrobe

If you’ve gone through many rounds of decluttering and still found your wardrobe scattered and disorganized, this post might just be what you need to create a capsule wardrobe!

If you’re new to minimizing clothes, check this out first.

These days, when I look into my wardrobe, I feel confident and at ease.

Being an avid “declutterer”, I have a modest-sized wardrobe comprising of pieces I love, but it took me a while to get it working efficiently. I can finally call it a capsule wardrobe!

Typically, most methods of decluttering involved evaluating clothes separately. This results in a wardrobe full of well-loved pieces that were essentially standalone’s – much like a football team full of stellar players who don’t know how to work together. The result is a sense of disorganization in the wardrobe and inefficiency.

That’s why I recommend this method to declutter your clothes and this post – to help you create a capsule wardrobe with clothes you love that also works efficiently.

The next time you look through your clothes, keep these 6 tips in mind.

1. For better decision-making, try on your favorite outfit before you begin.

Do this after you pile your clothes on the bed, and before you do anything else. Put on that dress or outfit that makes you feel the best about yourself. Remember that feeling. Identify the attributes that make you feel this way. Use it as a gauge to decide whether you want to keep a piece later on.

2. Design your capsule wardrobe with YOU in mind, not your clothes.

Do you have a beautiful dress that somehow doesn’t look right on you? I did. I bought it despite it being a little big because it’s the type of dress I’ve always wanted to wear!

But it didn’t suit my body shape. Every time I tried it on, I felt self-conscious. It was a tad baggy and the way it hung on my shoulders made them look skeletal. I thought maybe it just takes a little getting used to, maybe I need to tug it a little, bun up my hair… Or maybe I should accept that it doesn’t suit me.

Your clothes should work for you. If you feel you have to do something to make a piece work, let it go.

Don’t keep something just because it’s beautiful, keep something because it feels right on you and works well with the rest of your clothes. Consider its style, comfort and color. Does it bring out your best features and make you feel comfortable? Maybe you should put it on!

3. Physically trying on your clothes in different combinations helps A LOT.

This is the reason this post works better for people who have minimized their wardrobe. If you still own a lot of clothes, doing this may overwhelm you.

I’ve never bothered to do this in the past, I thought it was enough to visualize the outfits in my mind. It wasn’t until I tried my clothes on in different combinations that I realized how versatile and cute they could be when paired well.

The tendency to want more and more clothes arises from a feeling of lack. When you’ve pared down your clothing a fair bit, you may feel this bubble of doubt – what if you ran out of things to wear?

If you know that you can come up with different (and good) looks with what you have, you’ll feel more confident about having fewer clothes.

Consequently, you’ll feel more confident getting ready in the morning, knowing exactly how your clothes work together.

As a bonus, you’ll realize some clothes are not worth keeping because they didn’t go with what you have or the style you want.

4. It’s possible to identify insecurities through your clothes.

Being from a tropical climate and blessed with a weak circulation, I was concerned about dealing with cold weather. It shows in my wardrobe, I have a lot of jackets and long sleeve shirts.

Having tried my clothes on, I reassured myself that I have what I need to remain toasty in any weather and not look like a dork. I can stop adding warm clothes to my wardrobe now.

And then there are the black clothes. I’m most comfortable in black because I feel like they help me to blend in when I’m out and about. That tells me I have to work on self-confidence.

Knowing what your insecurities are helps you to deal with them. Do your clothes reflect your insecurities?

5. There comes a time when you can’t minimize any further. And it’s okay.

I’m obsessed about minimizing my clothes, but the number of clothes I have has plateaued after years of purging. There’ll always be a time when you can go no further. For some, this is when everything fits in a carry on, for others it’s 33 or 37 each season, while most people have more. That’s okay. Minimizing is not a race and it is never about the number. The process and outcome is different for everyone depending on lifestyle, interests, priorities and climate.

The point in minimizing your wardrobe (or anything else for that matter) is to not let it distract you from the important things.

Anyway, you can always come back to it, like I did back when my wardrobe still felt disorganized, and hence distracting to me. That brings me to the last lesson.

6. Make your capsule wardrobe work for you. Think cohesiveness.

Having lesser clothes gives you more control and makes it easier to see how the pieces work together. But, if you were evaluating your clothes separately, a small wardrobe can still feel messy and uncoordinated.

Instead, intentionally create a capsule wardrobe with pieces that work effectively together. Once you’ve done that and seen how your clothes work together (by trying them on), your capsule wardrobe is going to work for you.

All I can say is that these tips work! My wardrobe is significantly more interesting and coordinated, a strange thing because I didn’t add new pieces, I simply learnt how to use what’s in there.

This shows that it’s not always about how much we have, but whether we know how to work with them.

Have you tried building a capsule wardrobe? Or are you trying to create a capsule wardrobe? I hope the tips help. Let me know about your experience!