Funny you should ask because I've been doing inventory! (BTW, I'm the one with too few rather than too many clothes and I've been pushing myself HARD to add pieces. I just made it to 50 individual clothing items. Yay!! That's pretty much all the categories of clothes: outerwear, jackets, tops, bottoms, Ts, sweaters, you name it. All I left out was the hiking/gardening/sleeping stuff.) So I can tell you without hesitation I have 6 pairs of jeans: black wash jeggings, black wash skinnies, dark blue skinnies, sandwash boyfriends, midwash bootcuts, and very dark denim wide legs that I thrifted and have to wear with flats because of the way they were already hemmed. They are giving me a bad case of jeanslust for a new pair I could actually wear with heels. But I find 6 or so works well for me so long as I really like all of them.
I'm much more into shoes. I have 23 pairs of shoes right now -- that includes boots, heels, and flats. And I count cute sneakers in the flats category. The only thing I left out were things like snowboots, gardening and running shoes, hiking boots, etc..... you know... purely utility footwear that I would never put on just to socialize. I would have more, but my feet changed size after pregnancy and I had to give a lot of my older shoe library away. I buy quality shoes and I am very sentimental about them. When they go out of style I keep my favorites in a "time out" box for when styles change again. I have a beautiful pair of Betty Mueller pointy toe sling backs in there right now. I just took out a 13 year old pair of flatforms I bought in Italy because they're back in this summer! So maybe I am not the most reliable shoe confidante. I really, really love shoes.
I like having a small, good quality wardrobe. I like to wear relatively plain clothing and change up my accessories. And I like for there to be what I call "wardrobe collegiality" meaning things get worn often enough and in enough different ways that they really feel like they're mine, not some anonymous costume props from a store window. But I had slipped too low. It was actually hard to get dressed.
Well, that's a windy post! Why do you ask? Do you feel you have too many clothes? Too few? I determined my closet was anorexic when I recognized that I consistently struggled to get dressed for functions outside of my daily routine -- meetings, workshops, funerals, etc. And my daily looks were no great shakes either! Then I lost some weight and what little I did have no longer fit well. So I've been pretty much starting over from scratch for the last year.
This forum is great, no matter what you are trying to shake up in your own look. Good luck! L.
