I joined YLF over a year ago and started out by going through my closet carefully, removing items that had shown wear, fit me poorly, or regretfully were not my style (lifestyle as well as personal style). I design databases for a living and I am always interested in what tracking and analyzing the data can tell us about what we actually do (in contrast to what we think we do!) After my closet-revamp, I ended up with a pretty minimal closet (about 150 “leaving the house on purpose” items, which I subsequently winnowed down even further). My biggest concerns with this small a closet was (1) boredom and (2) worry over not having something appropriate for a specific occasion (and I dread panic shopping). I created a database to see what I was wearing and how often. I was especially interested in trying to wear as much as possible (to see which items worked or not) and in trying to add variety using shoes and scarves (especially scarves- I had quite a few and most had just languished at this point).

The first 8 months of tracking consisted of a lot of items that came and went or were replaced. I kind of got my closet act together mid-summer, so I decided to analyze what happened from 9/1/2014 to now. My job involves a lot of telecommuting from home so my lifestyle is pretty casual. But my husband and I do a lot of travel (much of which is mixed business and pleasure)- these 8 months included trips to Paris-Bordeaux-Brussels, New York City, Palm Beach, Las Vegas, and Charleston. Using a mix of 101 items (76 of which were “core” items- dresses, tops, bottoms, toppers), I wore 193 outfits, 147 of which were unique outfits- I was surprised that I got that much variety from a reasonably tight # of items- I never felt bored and I never had to scramble for something to wear (and there were 2 black tie events in this mix). (Of interest only 11 outfits were worn more than twice- and most of those were “at home” outfits- you get a lot of repeats when your FFBO is jeans + top!) I track items based on where they were worn (major categories: casual-home, casual-out, dressy, travel-casual, travel-dressy)- and I can pull up item lists, outfit lists, and #s for each based on specific dates and/or specific activity capsules (ie I can see what I actually wore on that trip to ___- useful for future travel planning).

I’m not quite at the French minimal wardrobe, but I am starting to see the advantage of a core of neutral items that mix and match and adding in accessories (scarves, jewelry, shoes) to add variety. I was fortunate in finally finding good core items this year (after an awful lot of ordering/trying on/returning- I am sure I am on some “list” at Nordstrom!)

My core items (with # times worn) ended up being:
Black jacket (9)/black sweater jacket (6)
Black pants (full length (14) + ankle length (5))
LBD 4 (I currently have 3 but one is on the chopping block)
Jeans (skinny (136) plus straight leg (12))
Black pumps (30)
Scarves (my top 3 were worn 33 times altogether)

Anyway, if you’ve hung in there through this analysis- thanks! The grand experiment in tracking my wardrobe continues. I’m happy to answer any questions or show actual results of queries I run on the data.