The Everyday Icon Style Podcast

Episode 167: Wardrobe Overhaul in 5 Easy Steps

• Tiffany Howard

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If your closet feels more like a chaotic mess than an inspiring space, it’s time for a change! Today, I’ll outline five straightforward steps to help you streamline your wardrobe for the new year. We'll start by crafting a vision for your ideal closet—not just the clothes, but how you organize everything from shoes to accessories. This episode offers the perfect guide to creating a joyful, organized space that reflects who you are and sets the tone for your ideal wardrobe.

This strategic approach ensures your closet truly supports your lifestyle and future goals. Plus, I'm eager to connect with you on Instagram to help identify and fill any wardrobe gaps. Let’s turn the daunting task of closet cleaning into a journey of self-discovery and empowerment, preparing you for an amazing year ahead!


Elevate Your Wardrobe in A Weekend: https://bit.ly/3CusnCv


Instagram: https://bit.ly/3VwhNlB
YouTube: https://bit.ly/3IyGFSl



Speaker 1:

Ignite your style with the Everyday Icon Style Podcast. I'm Tiffany, your style navigator and confidant here to lead women in corporate America on the quest to discover their timeless style. Let's revolutionize your wardrobe, empower your confidence and embrace your inner icon. Are you ready to redefine your corporate chic? Then let's get started. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Everyday Icon Style Podcast.

Speaker 1:

I am your host, tiffany, and today I am going to give you five simple steps to help declutter your closet. Declutter your closet, declutter your wardrobe however you want to use it. But before we dive in, I want to let you know a few housekeeping rules. One, this is the last episode of 2024, but don't worry, I will be back in 2025 and I may even put some of my favorite episodes or most listened to episodes up for the month of December for you to go and listen to. Also, since we're talking about cleaning out our closet, I have created an Elevate your Wardrobe in a weekend, which will also give you five additional steps that will help you with decluttering and creating a space that you want to create for your closet, because cleaning out your closet and your closet to me, in my opinion, is the core problem with discovering and building out your style. That's as easy as I can put it. So that's why I want to leave you at the end of the year with this, so that you can begin to take time going into the new year having a fresh, clean closet. So, starting next year, we can actually begin to build and create and discover the style and the wardrobe that's going to be authentic and embody everything that you want it to embody for you. So let's dive right on in.

Speaker 1:

So, with a cluttered wardrobe, it can make getting dressed feel stressful instead of empowering and easy and nice and fun. When you get dressed, it should be fun. It shouldn't be. Oh, I have to find something and you're preparing to get dressed because you have to sit there and figure out how, what am I going to wear? Where is X, y and Z, instead of just opening up your closet being able to pull things out with ease. So, whether you're overwhelmed by the sheer number of clothes or you're just struggling to find outfits that truly make you feel confident, today I'm going to give you some tips to help you reclaim your wardrobe space, one simple step at a time.

Speaker 1:

So, number one, I want you to define your ideal wardrobe. It all starts with a vision. What do you want your ideal wardrobe currently, right now? What do you want it to look like? It's going to look different for all of us, but I want you to get your juices flowing, and your creative juices flowing, to figure out what it is that you want, because this will help guide you one with the next step of taking everything out, and also later on, down the line when you actually begin to buy and incorporate new pieces into your wardrobe.

Speaker 1:

This doesn't just mean your clothes. It means the actual closet space as a whole, everything from how you want to store shoes, how you want to store your jewelry, your fragrances, your accessories, hangers, all of that. I want you to do that because I want us to make our closets, no matter how small they are or no matter how big they are. I want us to make these spaces that, when we open it, it makes us feel good, it looks good, it's organized and it's a joy to get dressed and it's peaceful to get dressed, because you're not overwhelmed trying to find things and pulling things, and clothes are everywhere. So I want that you to keep that in mind when you're creating this vision, and you can easily do this just by going to Pinterest and just finding different photos and different things of that nature and putting them on a mood board and kind of working from there just to get the ideas flowing.

Speaker 1:

So next up, we want to categorize everything in two steps. The first step is we want to divide and conquer, so we want to pull everything out and you want to make a pile for pants, tops, outerwear, blazers, shoes, accessories, everything. So you're going to have like 15, 11 piles. But that's okay, because what you're going to do is you're going to go in and you're going to go through each of these piles individually for the next step, each of these piles individually for the next step. That is, you're going to have three specific, distinct piles Keep, donate and discard. So when you go through the tops, what tops do you keep, which ones do you donate and which ones do you discard? That means put them in the trash, and which ones do discard? That means put them in the trash. For me personally, I only have two now, and that's keep and discard period. It makes it a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

Now, when you're doing this, I want you to ask yourself these questions would I buy this again today? How does it make me feel and if we already know if it's too big, if it's small, if it's soiled in any way, ripped in any way, we're going to throw that away. We do not want to keep anything that does not reflect who we are and where we are going. This way, as you're doing this, you're going to see what you had. It's going to see what you have left. If you're down to bare bones, that is okay, because we are out with the old and we are in with the new. This is what we want. We want to be able to curate something now that is going to be for you. Now, when we're doing this, I want you to not be too stressful. Don't overthink this. Just go with your first gut, because there's going to be something else that I will probably want you to do after we do this.

Speaker 1:

So, so far, be sure to categorize everything pants and tops, et cetera and then have your three main pals keep, donate and discard. Once you have removed out of your space the donate and the discards, I advise you to put them in another room or put them in your car, because if you're going to take them to the Goodwill or somewhere, or in the garage, somewhere that's out of sight and out of mind. I don't want them in this space once you've created those two piles. Now I want you to evaluate what you currently have, so I want you to identify what what you have and what you will need. So what remains? Do you have a white shirt, a white button down, a pair of jeans, a couple pair of black pants? I want you to look at what you have and I want you to recognize any gaps and to help you. If you're not sure of what gaps are, or what type of gaps you're looking for, or what your essentials should be, let me know on Instagram, in the comments of this post, on my Instagram, and I let me know if you would like me to create for you a guide, that is, for your essential pieces, that so you can maybe check off what you have or what you need. If you need something like that, please let me know and I'll be more than happy to create that for you. We this will help us evaluating what we have.

Speaker 1:

We want to create a wardrobe based on versatility. Not I bought this outfit here. I bought this outfit here because I saw this on Instagram or I saw this on TikTok, but it doesn't go with anything else, it just goes with that one particular thing. What we're trying to create is a versatile wardrobe, a mix match wardrobe, where everything in your closet goes together effortlessly in this. So we want to make getting dressed as easy as possible and take the stress out of, oh, this color doesn't go with this. We'll get into all of that later. But I want us to think differently about how we shop and how we do clothes. I want us to think of it. We need versatility and with versatility means you have a closet that is full of clothes that you love and you always, always, always, have something to wear.

Speaker 1:

Last but not least, in the steps is organize for daily ease. So you want to create now a system to organize the clothes that you have left in your closet. That makes sense for everyday dressing, so you can group items by type. Once you do by type, you can do by color. You could even take it down a notch and do work and casual. So, for example, for me, I have it by type, so I have pants, skirts, blouses, then I have blazers, jackets, et cetera, so I kind of know what to find. You can also, if we have work clothes and casual clothes that we hang up. We can even take it down further and say this section, right, here is all of what I wear to work these clothes over, here is what I wear for casual wear. That way now you know where everything is. But even at the basis of it, even if you do it that way, even if you take something from your professional wear and from your casual wear, all of that should still go together. But we're making it easy for you so that you understand and know what's in your closet, and it should only make as long as it makes sense to you, then you're good and you're fine.

Speaker 1:

You also want to look at, begin to look at, maximizing your also want to look at, begin to look at maximizing your space. If you have a small space, like I do, so you might want to use slimmer hangers. If you have your shoes and shoe boxes, maybe go and get containers that you can put your shoes in, because you can stack them high. Different things like that this goes back to. We're not just. It's not just about the clothes, it's about every, it's about the whole entire space. I want this space to be somewhere where you have joy getting dressed again. You have peace when you get dressed, that you love getting dressed again on a regular basis, and it's no longer anxious and it's no longer overwhelming to you. So it's the entire space as a whole. Now having an organized wardrobe isn't just about looking good, but it's about making your life easier every day so that getting dressed becomes a positive, a powerful, a positive, powerful experience instead of a stressful one.

Speaker 1:

We're going to try to remove stress in our everyday lives.

Speaker 1:

We have enough of that in the real world. We don't need that in our closets. So, to go over everything that we did today, one I want you to create a vision. This is your vision. It doesn't have to make sense to everybody to create a vision. This is your vision, doesn't have to make sense to everybody. Create a vision.

Speaker 1:

I want you to categorize everything. Once you initially take everything out to tops and bottoms, outerwear, accessories, then I want you to have another category to the side of what you're going to keep, what you're going to donate and what you're going to discard. We're going to keep what you're going to donate and what you're going to discard. We're going to evaluate and fill gaps and we're going to organize it for our daily, everyday ease.

Speaker 1:

So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, let me know over on Instagram. I will have a brief snippet of today's episode in the comments on the post. So let me know your thoughts and if you want me to create something for you, to help you with understanding and knowing what the gaps and what you need and what you would need for wardrobe, I am more than happy to do so and, with all of that being said, I hope you guys have an amazing rest of your day, have an amazing rest of 2024. It has been a lot over the past few weeks, so I hope you guys take time, breathe, enjoy, stay healthy, stay safe, and I look forward to helping you create and curate a closet for you in 2025.