Polly, seriously:

STOP WEARING CLOTHES YOU HATE!

Stop it.

Stop it now.

By wearing clothes you hate, you are breaking Angie's Number One Rule: Have fun with fashion.

Bundle those nasty t-shirts off to the Goodwill this minute!!

I mean it!!!

Just... stop it!

Oh yeah! Polly, I agree with Mary. You are too wonderful to be wearing un-fabness. Good luck in your continued closet management and sorting.

Polly, Cynthia from Be Fabulous Daily had an awesome post last week about her new approach to closet curation. Basically she asks, "how would you feel if thieves broke into your house and stole this?" The answer to this question could be sad (keep), ambivalent (maybe if it's useful) or happy (definitely get rid of it!). I thought this was a fresh new take on the whole keep or toss issue!

http://www.befabulousdaily.us/.....n-curation

I'm with MaryK. If you wear items you do not love, you are not having fun with your wardrobe. For myself, items that I still like, but are getting worn become "around the house" items. One of the best things I've done, is the hanger flip trick for a season. At the end of a seaon, in the donate bag it goes. If I haven't worn it in 3 months (I have 4 distinct seasons) then I do not need it.

Mary - that told me! And Heather!

You are quite right!

Diana that is such a great way of looking at things.

Hmm, maybe I should stage a break-in in which the thief takes only the stuff that I want to replace and I could claim on the insurance and go shopping!

(that's a joke, by the way...)

Looks like there may be a trip to goodwill in the morning...

Ha, that's a great way of looking at it!

I have trouble getting rid of sentimental t-shirts, especially my old concert souvenir shirts and things of that nature. I would really like to try some t-shirt surgery on them, because I do like to wear "funky" stuff like that every once in a while but most of them are of the oversized, boxy, crew neck variety so they are completely un-flattering and never actually get worn except for gardening. One of these days I'll get the sewing machine fixed and take a stab at resizing them. Or perhaps making a cool "memory" scarf like this one: http://blog.craftzine.com/arch.....scarf.html.

The sad thing is that of my massively overstuffed wardrobe, I can only think of a handful of things I'd be upset to lose.

I love what lyn* says that people who really have to depend on second hand to get by deserve to have some nice stuff too. Thank you lyn* for saying it so nicely.

Mander, I have a space bag in my basement filled with old concert tees (Siouxsie and the Banshees and R.E.M., anyone?), as well as tees from the radio stations where i worked. They don't get worn, but I couldn't bear to part with them. They're probably worth a little something as collectors items.

Diana, I like that "thievery" test -- I'm going to try that.

I tend to relegate items to second-tier status (my knocking-around-the-house clothes), but then they seem to hang around way too long. Honestly, how many of those things do I need? I'm getting more selective. I just put about half a dozen tees and casual knit tops in the Goodwill bag because they're starting to pill or fade. I wore them some last year under cardigans or hoodies, but I can tell that this is no longer going to cut it for me.