Preparing a Fall/Winter Wardrobe - Make a List

Yesterday I laid out my goals for my fall/winter closet preparations.  Once I'd put it out there for the blogging world to see, I felt rather motivated to get moving with this little project...much to the chagrin of my husband who sighed and said "Great! Now you'll be forced to be busier."  Oh well, hopefully it won't take me too long to finish the first few steps!

As a reminder, here is Step 1: 

List all of my cooler weather clothing, as well as items that can carry over from summer, in a spreadsheet.

Personally,  I love Microsoft Excel and use spreadsheets, both at work and at home, to make my life easier.  A written list works fine, too.  In fact, I tried that first. But after writing all over the margins and any available space - and then not being able to read what I scribbled earlier - I resorted to the spreadsheet.  I created 3 columns with a title at the top of each column.  My columns were "Item", "Color" and "Notes".  I went through my fall/winter clothing which is usually stored upstairs during the warmer months and listed everything single thing I owned for cool weather...including stuff worn during the summer that could do double-duty (T-shirts, darker colored skirts, jeans, etc).

Keep similar items together.  Dresses all in one place, then skirts, then pants.  I listed mine by designer just because I can tell you pretty much what designer/store sold every item in my closet.  However, you choose to do it is fine.  Then in the next column, I typed the main color of each item.  This helps me narrow down what colors I have a lot of (black) and what colors I might want to infuse into my wardrobe in the future (love green, but strangely have very little green in my closet).  What's handy about that is that when I'm developing my list of needs/wants down the road, it's easy to look at my list and see that I have not one, but 3 gray sweaters, and I need to look at other colors....even when the gray sweater I'm looking at is on sale for $3!  Finally, I used the "Notes" column to jot down things like "fits too big" or "needs to be replaced".  You don't necessarily have to use that column during this stage, but you'll need it for later.

And in the interest of being helpful, here's a screenshot of my spreadsheet. I don't claim to be an Excel guru and this is an extremely basic spreadsheet, but you'll get the drift of what I did:

I have a medium-sized wardrobe after having culled mercilessly (or what I thought was mercilessly) last fall.  This entire process of listing and typing took me about one hour.  It's not a huge investment of time, but is extremely helpful both now as I develop my list of needs/wants for the fall, but also for later.  I will carry this spreadsheet in my purse (if you have a SmartPhone, you could store it there) and use it for all future shopping trips.  That way, when the sale racks are calling my name, I can look for specific pieces that I actually need and not get caught up in what I like to call a "sale fever".

Tomorrow, we'll look at Step 2:  Try on all of my cooler weather clothing....Stay tuned.....