So one of the challenges I’ve been thinking of doing is the project 333. This is a minimalist fashion challenge that invites you to dress with 33 items or less for three month.

The 33 items includes: clothing (tops & bottoms), accessories (scarfs and such), jewelry (which can probably be considered an accessory), shoes, and outerwear (jackets).

            Items not included: underwear, sleepwear, loungewear, workout clothes, and sentimental jewelry that you always wear.

So I’ve realized that this is something that I’m going to be modifying as I go along. This modification is for several reasons:

I have pants, shorts, and capris in different sizes (mainly due to weight flux—losing and gaining) and I’m hoping to start it back in the downward trend. This means that I potentially could be dropping sizes and since I don’t want to have to buy new, I need to keep the different sizes.

I’m not including any business casual or business professional clothes in the challenge (since I’m also hoping to change jobs—I need the two types of business clothes for networking and interviews).

Winter clothes have been put away, and the rest of the shirts have been separated into four categories:

Long and three-quarter length sleeve shirts (these are basically early spring, late fall, and early winter shirts);

Short sleeve shirts (most of which are hung—though those that are either seasonal [look more like they’d fit a specific holiday—say Halloween] or are a little more political, have been folded and put away in the drawers. But of the shirts that I have hanging—there are forty-two short sleeve shirts. It will take me a while to figure out which ones I would want to keep (unless I want to cycle through them),

Sleeveless shirts, these have been divided into two categories:

The dressier tunic style shirts that are hung in the closet, and the more traditional tank tops that are stored in the dresser drawer.

I’ve also realized that this doesn’t even count all the clothes that I have in storage (which I wouldn’t be able to sort through until I get a new place and unpack). So I do have a clothing problem—I have way to many clothes. So the plan for the next three months is to determine which shirts (at least of the short sleeve variety) I wear the most often (though truthfully I remember wearing each shirt at least once last year), and then determining the best way of getting rid of the others (either selling for a little money or donating to charity).

When it comes to the accessories: I do like my jewelry—so this would be something else that would take me awhile to figure out which pieces I really want to keep and which ones I would be willing to part with. Other accessories that I have include a couple of hats (only three are winter, the other three are nice weather hats), and two scarfs (again one is more winter and the other can be considered seasonal—it could be worn with something in the fall as it is a brightly colored scarf). I also have several pairs of shoes (which in theory I should have down to say one or two), but some are seasonal (winter) and the rest are tennis shoes (so also workout shoes).

Luckily it doesn’t include workout clothes, as I have a good number of tank tops that I wear for both working out and sleeping. I’ve also realized that basically all of the tee shirts that I have all have some type of graphic design on them, so I need to decide which ones I want to keep and which ones I’m willing to part with.

So I’ve decided that for the most part I’m only going to currently concern myself with the short sleeve and dressy tunic tops for this challenge. If I cut the number of those shirts down—then I’ll move on to the longer sleeved shirts for a challenge come fall and winter. I’m also going to leave everything hanging—and what I don’t wear by the end of say two weeks (which is when I usually do laundry)—I’ll start boxing up and setting aside. It will be interesting to see if by the end of June if I can get the current number of t-shirts down from the over forty to say twenty five (in other words I’m going to see if I can get rid of twenty different tops within the next three months).