Can you stand another wardrobe analysis?? If you like numbers, read on!

I have been keeping track of WIW for over a year now. In October, I started tracking the number of times I wore each item. I divided it into 2 6-month periods- Oct-Mar for fall/winter and Apr-Sept for spring/summer.

I included the main categories of clothes in my "active" closet. While a lot of my clothing can be worn year round, there are pieces that were out of season for fall/winter and those were moved to another closet. I also didn't count loungewear, sleepwear, gear, accessories, etc.

When Mo wrote a post about the number of items she needed to insure that all of them got a reasonable number of wearings, I calculated mine too, based on a 5 day work week and the frequency of repeating that I thought I would be comfortable with.

Well, the first thing that became obvious was that I wore many more different pieces than I had determined that I would "need."

Below are the numbers I had calculated that I needed followed by the number that I actually wore:
Pants 12/23
Jeans 4/6
Dresses 2/4
Skirts 2/2 (I got one right!)
Tops 13/38
Layering tops 6/12
Toppers 6/11

Overall, I had 121 pieces total and I wore 96 of them. So I wore 79% of all of the items in my closet. I think that is pretty high...what do you think?

Specifically I wore:
82% of my pants
75% of my jeans
50% of my skirts
100% of my dresses
69% of my toppers
75% of my layering tops
88% of my knit tops
55% of my shirts
96% of my sweaters

With footwear, I wore 71% of my 40 pairs. But of those 32 that I wore, 11 were only worn 1 time. So I think I could pare down on the total number since I tend to wear my favorites most often.

And I really like BOOTS. Of the 12 pairs of shoes I wore most frequently, 10 were boots! And 8 of the 12 pairs were black. So I can keep buying black boots, right??!!

Black showed as a strong preference in other categories too. With pants, I would be wise to be sure that I always have several styles of black pants in my wardrobe...as well as white jeans...because I reached for them most frequently.

Same with sweaters...the most frequently worn were black. Interestingly, the 2 items I kept from NAS last year- both sweaters- both made the 'most frequently worn' list.

Of my most-worn toppers, one was black and 2 were gray.

So what about the 25 pieces I didn't wear? I moved 15 of them to my spring/summer closet and list to see if they get worn in warmer weather. I purged 8 of them. And 2 I am keeping for next year to see if I reach for them then. If not, they can probably go.

I am continuing my tracking. For this season, I am also tracking how many times I use each of my bags because I do have a large collection. And I've started keeping WIW for weekends too. I actually have a higher number of items for spring/summer but that's because I've included the shorts, casual knits and sweatshirts that are limited to weekend wear and worn mostly during this time of year.

If you have made it this far, bless you!

I do enjoy my nerdy lists. I like tracking my purchases too and that, combined with looking at what I really do wear, will hopefully insure that I end up with the perfect sized wardrobe full of pieces that I love to wear!