Anyone who knows my take on clothing and fashion knows full well how much talent I have for stuffing things in corners of my closet, losing them, and finding them serendipitously three months later. Those same people also know that I love to wear the same sweater 3 days out of the week (which I’m wearing as we speak), and the same black and white striped dress at least one or two of the remaining days. But I still feel like I need the other 20 sweaters, of course.

This was my pattern, at least, up until Monday of this past week. Browsing the internet, as is common on a Monday evening, I came across a new phenomenon: the capsule wardrobe. Completely foreign and way outside my comfort zone of t-shirt stuffing, the capsule wardrobe, as described by Caroline Joy Rector, is a 37-piece collection of clothing, outerwear and shoes that you curate and wear for the next 3 months, or a full season. On her blog, Un-Fancy, she explains that every season (autumn, winter, spring and summer), you go through your collection and change out items for more seasonal pieces. This way, every season, there’s a time to refresh and refine your style. The "capsule wardrobe," as I understood it, was supposed to make getting ready in the morning much easier (which I needed), create less laundry (which I really needed), and curb the constant desire to buy new items (which I really really needed).

I looked up at my closet, which, of course, was spewing scarfs and jackets, and imagined a closet in which I could actually find everything I was looking for. This seemed impossible, so I forgot the notion and went on to do something else.

But an hour later, I was looking at my closet again, thinking, “Well, maybe it could work.”

Safe to say, I spent the rest of evening drowning in clothes.

Fast forward to Tuesday afternoon and I have multiple bags-worth of clothes to be donated or sold, a plastic bin full of seasonal summer dresses, and a closet that’s almost entirely black and white. At which point I’d learned a few lessons about myself:

#1: Coats are my weakness.

#2: During the colder months, I wear three colors, max.

#3: I didn’t actually need all the pieces I thought I did.

I was shocked. Granted, I had to bend Caroline’s rules a little bit for my own twist, but I was still able to do it. Most of my clothes, admittedly, weren’t that hard to part with. Why? Because once I started looking at them, I realized exactly why I don’t wear them.

Most of the things that filled my closet were items I’d had since sophomore year of high school, maybe even earlier. More than half of them were hand-me-downs from my mother, old t-shirts and tights with stains and holes in them, or skirts and dresses that had been warped by an accident in the wash that I’d never really known what to do with. The other, much smaller section were pieces I’d worn a few times but never really worked the way I wanted them to. All in all, there was only a portion of items that I knew for certain I couldn’t dare part with.

Which brings me to the final chapter of this little cleaning adventure: what’s left behind. Currently, my capsule wardrobe rules are a little unique. Traditionally, the 37 pieces make up everything except for accessories, loungewear and sportswear. This wasn’t impossible until I realized one, very critical thing: I love my coats.

My little collection of coats was mostly the doing of family, who one Christmas became very concerned with my ability to stay warm in the great state of Washington, as well as a few hand-me-downs from my mother when she realized that there was no need for plaid trench coats in the middle of Arizona. I wore each one of these lovely additions for the seven to eight months out of the year where I’d freeze my chi-chi's off otherwise. And I knew that I’d be doing the same thing, with the exact same coats, for the next decade at the least. So, the coats had to stay.

What I ended up with were 37 pieces that included clothing and shoes, but excluded outerwear along with a bin’s worth of lounge and sportswear. Six dresses, eight sweaters, four skirts, 13 tops, two pairs of jeans, three main pairs of shoes (which of course were all variations of black boots), and a few odds and ends.

And guess what? I actually love it. This whole week has been the easiest dressing experience I’ve had to date. Any pieces I had a hard time parting with or was unsure of were tucked away for another season, and everything else are my all-time favorite clothes. We’ll see how the rest of the next few months go, but so far, condensing my wardrobe has made dressing unbelievably simple and still effortlessly chic!