One of my first goals for this year is to get my closet to a point where I can go into it and choose outfits fairly quickly. For quite some time, when I open the door, I just see a sea of clothes and have a really hard time choosing. I don't have a huge wardrobe. Yesterday and today I was inspired by Janet’s recent posting on her 2017 goals, especially the part about putting some stuff into the holding zone so can “see between the hangers”. I mean REALLY inspired! Thanks Janet!!

1. First I put a bunch of stuff that was not thrilling me into a holding zone, didn’t think too much about it. My holding zone is in a separate closet that holds out of season stuff. It was already a mess and it’s no worse now
2. I did a first pass at the pie chart thing, that I need to work on some more.
3. I decided to rearrange my winter pullover sweaters by color instead of by style. Not sure what inspired this but it got the creative juices flowing! I did the same with jeans (skinny vs straight leg). These items plus toppers are the mainstay of my mostly casual winter wardrobe so a good place to start.
4. I got geeky and created a grid/chart spreadsheet with sweaters listed on the left side and jeans across the top, then pulled out all the pants and put them next to the sweaters to see what colors work. These pants and tops all fit so I didn't have to do try ons. I put an x in every box where the items looked good together by color. The grey jeans looked best with black, burgundy, blush, and blues, and the blue jeans looked good with most of the colors. No big aha moment here, just a confirmation.
5. While reviewing the small set of legging/skinny jeans and colors that worked with them, I realized that I have been trying to wear this look more, but I don’t really love this look on me. My body shape is petite pear and it’s really tricky to get just the proportions right, and even when done well it’s not my favorite look. I do have a few combinations that work well so I will call this a capsule, keep wearing it, and will drop any efforts to expand this capsule for now.
6. I also discovered that I have two sweaters that are pseudo-orphans (go with very little) and one that I thought was a pseudo-orphan this is really not.
7. Next I found 6 very light pullovers in cashmere or merino that are too lightweight to wear alone in mid-winter, even with an underlayer, but will work with a topper. I put them into a separate capsule.
8. Found a few more tops tha are “just ok”. Into the holding zone…I don’t want to wear “just ok” any more.

The Results

1. I now have 3 capsules I’m going to keep in the front of my closet, everything else is getting pushed aside for now. I created YLF collection capsules for them so I can remember them, although I’m missing finds for a few things.

1. Capsule 1: Skinny jeans and sweaters - 3 jeans and 5 tops, mostly neutrals
2. Capsule 2: Light sweaters plus Toppers - 6 sweaters and 7 toppers, the sweaters are all solids and
   mostly neutrals, the toppers have a little more variety
3. Capsule 3: Casual Everyday
• 9 jeans: 3 grey, 3 light/mid wash denim, 2 dark
  wash, and 1 red
• 13 sweaters: 2 tan/camel, 1 cream, 1 black, 1
  B/W stripe, 1 B/W print, 1 each black, blue, navy, blush, burgundy, and the two almost orphans (grey print and purple). Almost all solids

Things I Observed/Learned

1. I’ll keep the skinny jean/tunic silhouette in my closet and will wear it, but I do not want to expand it

2. My sweater collection represents my “old style” pretty well. Lots of basic styles in solid neutrals like black, grey, brown/camels with much smaller amounts of other colors, and very few prints, textures, or interesting shapes. I want to add more color, texture, pattern, either in sweater, blouses to wear under them, or toppers. This gives me goals for future shopping. I do have a lot of patterned scarves but I’m tired of using that as the only pattern in outfits.

3. No wonder I don’t do much pattern mixing….I don’t have much pattern to mix! I think I have a little more in my warm weather
   wardrobe, but the cold weather wardrobe is solids all the way. BORING.

4. The total number of items in these capsules feels too small, especially the jeans. Good excuse to shop, but I want to make sure I get things that add some really style to my wardrobe (another goal for this year) so I need to go slowly.
   

Next Steps

1. Wear these three capsules for the next few weeks at a minimum and see how it goes. I need to pay attention to silhouette but I have a pretty good idea how it will work.
2. If I do any shopping it ought to be more focused, and I need to do it slowly.
3. Need to think about footwear next, and other capsules.