5 Easy Steps to Declutter Your Wardrobe

With our recommended five steps, believe it or not,  you can finish the task in a day or two. While a spring declutter seems overwhelming, multiple studies show the benefits of cleaning and organising your wardrobe. Save Your Wardrobe’s community reported that overflowing wardrobes trigger genuine anxiety. Organise your wardrobe to lead a happier, calmer and more sustainable lifestyle! 

By being able to clearly see all of your clothes, you will become more aware of what you own, not only avoiding repeat purchases, but also helping you make the most of what you have! 

Without further ado, 

1. Remove all of your clothes from your cupboards and wardrobes.

Time to face the wrath of piles of clothing falling on you… As you remove all your clothing onto your bed or floor, we suggest you methodically place all different categories of clothing with each other in a different pile. All tops on the left upper corner of the bed, jeans on the right, dresses on the chair… you get the idea! 

2. Start inventorying your wardrobe digitally with  Save Your Wardrobe 

Move through each category of item, digitising as you go. Find a flat surface to lay your item of clothing to snap the perfect picture of the item. We love aesthetic wardrobes and recommend you use the same surface for each item of clothing for consistency! If you would rather not have the floral printed bedcover your Grandmother gifted you in the background, use our revolutionary background removal feature for a clean, curated look! Watch our app magically auto fill features of the item like brand, colour and category. 

Top tip: Use our mood tags to help you categorize your items. This will make them easier to find when planning your outfits for work, dates or special occasions. 

3. While you go through your wardrobe, look out for tired knits, holes, crinkled and dusty items.

We all have those items tucked at the back of our wardrobes that we haven’t worn in a while. Covered in dust, moth holes, red wine stains or spiderwebs, who knows what! Instead of putting them in the reject pile, think about how great they would look with a little rejuvenation. With the average lifespan for a piece of clothing in the UK estimated as just 2.2 years; and an approximate £140 million worth of clothing ending up in landfill every year – taking good care of your clothes has never been more important. 

Caring for your clothes will not only keep the items out of landfill and in a wearable state, it will also reduce the emissions that occur during a piece of clothing’s life cycle; by extending the active life of a piece of clothing by just 7 months we could cut waste by half. Explore the Services tab on the SYW app for plenty of options to clean, repair and alter your clothes. 

For eco-cleaning solutions, book with our partners Crown Tailoring and Dry Cleaning , Oxwash or BLANC for something a little more delicate.  Crown also offers a sanitisation and deodorisation service for clothing and shoes (extremely useful during the pandemic!) If you are looking for leather cleaning, Clothes Doctor and Shoe spa are also available to refresh your shoes and bags. To repair, alter or customise an item, BLANC, Clothes Doctor, Crown and ShoeSpa have great options from altering a pair of jeans to your post pandemic size to even re-dyeing a leather bag. No matter the need, they are here for you!

If you would rather DIY, check out our Empower Your Wardrobe section for tips and tricks on caring for your garments at home!. This section of the services tab will enable you to learn essential mending skills like threading a needle or patching ripped jeans with Repair What you Wear and Clothes Doctor. Can’t find what you need? Shake your phone and ask us for tips on any garment care.

4. Sit down, relax and scroll through your digital wardrobe…Make the hard decisions about what to keep, refresh, donate or sell.

Now is the fun part! Scroll through your digital wardrobe and organise. Digital organisation is a lot less effort than physical! Use our smart folder features to create folders of items. We suggest a folder of items a) you definitely want to keep, b) are not too sure about, and c) do not want anymore.

We all have looked at items in our wardrobe knowing that we would never be caught dead in them again… but your ‘hate’ might be someone else’s ‘rate’! Instead of throwing garments away and contributing to the masses of waste and emissions, why not responsibly donate or sell items. We recommend our trusted partner and responsible donation platform Thrift+, where you can donate items and contribute to a chosen charity, a win win! However, if you are saving up to treat yourself with a holiday this summer and are feeling entrepreneurial, why not try uploading your items to a popular second hand marketplace like Depop or Vinted? Once you have those beautiful images in your digital wardrobe, easily list items on these platforms to keep your clothing fueling the circular economy. 

5. Now that you have decluttered. Feeling the urge to shop and replace items? Buy better with our Responsible Shopping recommendations.

If you noticed a few of your outfits aren’t quite complete and you’re missing some basics like a black turtleneck or LBD remember the adage, buy less, buy better. We’re all for you getting that essential item, but more sustainably of course!

For a more sustainable wardrobe, check its sustainability score. Through our partnership with Good on You, you will see the rating of brands in your wardrobe. To avoid purchasing from fast fashion brands that have a negative impact on the environment and their employees, Good on You has a fashion directory filled with more ethical alternatives to brands. 

Alternatively, buying second hand is a great option for the earth (and your wallet!). Thrift+ or other second hand marketplaces have endless options of styles, sizes and brands to fit your preferences.

Congratulations! You have efficiently and effectively organised your wardrobe in the most sustainable way!

Having your wardrobe on your phone is a really useful way of knowing what you have which not only reduces cost per wear and repeat purchases, but also helps reduce the time it takes to decide what to wear each day, helping the planet and yourself feel great.