My Clothes: The Journey So Far

There is no denying that I am a hoarder. More specifically, I am a hoarder of clothes. My wardrobe is still home to items that I wore when I was a fifteen year old, taking my first steps into my own fashion world. Those steps were not wobbly baby steps. When I finished school I was so overwhelmed by the freedom that came with not having to wear a uniform that I launched myself head first into a radical two year clothing marathon. I didn’t wear an outfit twice in all of that time, gathered clothes from every wardrobe in my family home and spent any spare money in local charity and vintage shops. This was no ‘Mean Girls’ esque designer binge – I was only adamant that I looked different from everyone else and that my clothes were special.

Charity shops are like treasure troves to me. My local area when growing up was quite an affluent one and many of the charity shops were filled with donations from well to do ladies and gents. This made for rich picking. Instead of buying lots of cheap garments from H&M and Topshop (although I do do a bit of that too) I love finding clothes that have already stood the test of time, look amazing and will last me forever aswell!

There’s also the bonus of charity shop prices (although they have shot up since shows like ‘Mary Queen of charity shops’). You are not only saving yourself a fortune by buying fewer, better quality clothes that last, but they are much cheaper and all of your money goes to charity!

I have found real gems in my many years of trawling the charity shops. My Hobbs tartan coat with faux fur collar cost me £10 from a charity shop in Bath three years ago and I still love it as much now as when I first saw it. I also have a small collection of designer vintage pieces that I would never be parted with. However, I have not always been a careful and level- headed shopper and I do have a lot of clothes that are too outrageous, just not ‘me’, too small, too big and those ones everybody has that you only wear on rainy, scruffy days and which make you feel rainy and scruffy!

Because I am such a hoarder the amount of ‘wrong’ pieces of clothing I own only ever multiplies. It isn’t until I am made to haul my obscenely over-sized wardrobe around the country with me that I realise that it has gone too far.

As a little experiment I decided to only pack a ‘key piece wardrobe’ when we came on our first recce of Edinburgh. My friend Megan (a fellow charity shop addict and key piece outfit extraordinaire) helped me to choose two pairs of trousers, one skirt, one ‘going out’ dress, three tops, a jumper and one pair of shoes to take with me. I had planned to be away for two weeks but ended up staying for three.

At the beginning of the trip I felt a sense of clarity and freedom at having such limited choice of what to put on in the morning. Half way through the second week I was becoming a bit peeved at the amount of washing I was having to do and pining for all of my lonely clothes back home. By the end of the three weeks I was a moaning, miserable madam and couldn’t wait to get home and wear all of my clothes at once and walk around like that for a week!

In an act of selfish, unadvised revenge at having been put in such a position I decided to forget about small, perfectly formed wardrobes and, instead, bring literally every item that I have ever bought (that would fit in the car) to Edinburgh this time around. When we arrived at the second of our string of holiday lets the first thing I did was pack the awaiting empty bedroom furniture with at least six pairs of jeans, trousers that don’t count as jeans, T-shirts that would only fit a ten year old, jumpers that were so bulky that had to be folded up and left on the floor, ragamuffin old tops that I haven’t worn in years and seemingly thousands of dresses, shorts (it is WINTER in SCOTLAND!), things that are too short to be dresses but too long to be tops and so much more.

Even at this point I did not come to the important realisation that I did three weeks later when having to stuff it all back into black bin bags (the only viable vessel to transport it to the next holiday let). But when the realisation did hit me, it hit me hard. It will be music to my parents’ and my boyfriend’s ears:

I HAVE TOO MANY CLOTHES!

I know I have to stick by my new found resolution to half the number of clothes I own. However, as any hoarder reading this will know, my main emotion at the thought of saying goodbye to any of the pieces that have travelled with me on my journey into near-adult hood is dread! Seeing all of them folded, stacked and piled up in this, the last holiday let before the PROPER FLAT, is like looking at a group of old  friends who, in some ways, make me who I am. The only benefit that I can think of (apart from knowing that the next move will be so much more simple and less bin bag filled) is that the clothes I bought from charity shops will go back from whence they came and be bought by some other young fashionista whose money will be going to charity! Hurray!