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When it came to my wardrobe, I used to think more is better. More clothes equals more options, which equals a happier me, right? 

It turns out it doesn’t work like that. 

The habit of over-shopping brought me a wardrobe stuffed with clothes that I didn’t truly need. I was wearing about 20% of the items I owned anyway, and the other 80% were there ‘just in case’.

Until I started decluttering. That’s when it all got lighter. 

It became easier to find my favourite pieces and to get dressed in the morning. Laundry got faster, and opening my wardrobe started to put a smile on my face rather than a frown.

If you’re also struggling, here are 15 things your wardrobe doesn’t need and you can probably declutter today.

15 things your wardrobe doesn’t need (and you can declutter)

Keep reading below or watch the video:

1. Clothes you haven’t worn in a year

I do like to use the 6/6 rule here. If I haven’t worn a certain item in the past 6 months and I don’t really see myself using it for the next 6, then it’s probably an item that can go.

And I like this rule because it does account for seasons as well. If you live in a four-season country like I do, you obviously need a bit of variety, like thinner clothes and thicker jumpers and coats—things like that. But this is a rule I find really helpful to follow.

2. Duplicate items

I find that if I’ve got a lot of duplicates, I usually tend to gravitate towards one or two of them.

When it comes to white T-shirts, I have a few of them in slightly different fit. But it’s really helpful to ask myself: if I have duplicates, do I actually wear all of them, or do I have one favourite that I wear all the time, while the others just sit there?

This allowed me to actually get rid of a lot of duplicates that I wasn’t really wearing.

3. Clothes that don’t fit

This is a hard category of clothes to get rid of. That can happen for various reasons. For example, as moms in that postpartum period (I had my baby over a year and a half ago), there’s that feeling of wanting to hold on to a lot of items we had pre-pregnancy, hoping they will fit us again one day.

But sometimes, having those items in our wardrobe can make us feel really bad about ourselves. It can make us feel like failures or like we’re not getting there fast enough.

In the end, it’s really up to us to figure out, “Is this affecting me and my mood?” If it is, it’s a good idea to get those items out of your wardrobe.

If there’s anything that doesn’t fit you right now, either declutter it completely—sell it or donate it to somebody else—or keep it in a ‘decide later’ bin, somewhere that’s out of sight so you don’t see it every single day. Having items in your wardrobe that you see every day, making you feel bad about yourself, is something you can avoid.

4. Any trendy pieces you don’t really like

I have bought items in the past because they were on trend. I thought they were really cool as they were all over social media. But then I realised that, actually, when I put them on, I didn’t really like them that much. Or I wasn’t wearing them that often because, for some reason, they just didn’t fit my style or they just didn’t make me feel good.

That’s a lesson learned: just because it’s trendy doesn’t mean it suits me.

5. Shoes that hurt your feet

I’m quite flexible on other rules, but this one is a hard rule for me. 

If there’s anything that hurts or rubs my feet, feels uncomfortable or too tight, it has to go. Life is too short to have uncomfortable shoes, especially when you’re a mom running after a toddler. Such shoes had to go from my wardrobe.

6. Items kept only for sentimental reasons

I’m not saying you have to get rid of them completely. Maybe there’s a special piece of clothing that you do want to keep—maybe it’s worth keeping it in a memory box or somewhere you store sentimental items. 

But it’s also worth having a container or a limit on those. If we keep wardrobes full of clothes just because they remind us of a certain time in our life, that can get overwhelming, really fast.

So, if there is something special, I do think it’s worth holding on to that—maybe in a special place, but not necessarily in your day-to-day wardrobe. 

For me, when I open my daily wardrobe, I want to see items that I can wear every single day or almost every day. That is what makes getting dressed in the morning really easy.

7. Fabrics that are inconvenient to you

One thing I realised is that I’m not in a stage of life right now, as a busy mum with young children, to actually have laundry items that need extra care. 

We all go through seasons of life. Sometimes we have more time for these things, and sometimes we don’t. I’m in one of those seasons where I just cannot handle the extra maintenance. 

So I try to ask myself, “Do I actually have the capacity at the moment to care for them and to maintain them looking good?”

8. Items very worn out

Any item that shrunk in the wash—like my black cardigan—anything that’s stretched out, has holes in, all these are items that can go. 

I used to say, ‘Oh, I’ll keep this as a pyjama,’ or ‘I’ll keep it as just lounging around the house.’ But I already had loungewear and I already had a bunch of pyjamas. I didn’t need extras of those items.

9. Clothes with tags still on

If you look in your wardrobe and you have items that you bought weeks or months ago, and they still have the tag on, do yourself a favour: take a picture, put it up on Vinted, and get rid of it. 

When we don’t wear items like that, it is for a reason, even if we consciously don’t always realise it. They either make us feel uncomfortable, or don’t fit our lifestyle. For whatever reason, those items don’t fit us, so it’s just a good idea to get rid of them and make room for the items that you do really love.

10. Formal wear you don’t need

I have kept a couple of bits for formal occasions and special events, but they aren’t that many in this current season of life. This is why, for me, it’s not worth keeping a lot of those items in my wardrobe.

It’s a good idea to ask yourself if you do have a need for those items, if you do actually wear them, and if you do have a lot of events.

And if you don’t, then maybe you can get rid of some of those. Or you can keep them stored separately in a special bin for that once a year when you do need those items.

11. Clothes that don’t match your current lifestyle

We’ve all been there. We’ve bought items that are cute on the hanger, that look lovely in the shop, but then we got home and realised, “Actually, I’m a mom going to soft plays a lot with my toddler. I don’t really have anywhere to wear this trendy, cute item.”

So, anything that doesn’t match your current lifestyle can go from your wardrobe.

12. Gifts you never liked or wore

When it comes to gifts, there can be quite a lot of guilt attached. We might think that somebody who loves us gave us a gift, and then we feel like we’d be ungrateful if we got rid of it.

I realised I didn’t need to hold on to those items just because somebody gave them to me. And you don’t either. 

It doesn’t mean you love that person any less; it doesn’t mean you don’t appreciate the gift. I’m sure you already said thank you for the gift to them. Now you have permission to let go of that item if it no longer serves you. Maybe somebody else would enjoy that item even more. 

13. Clothes that make you feel insecure or uncomfortable

I’ve bought these in the past: items that I really liked in the shop, but then I put them on, and they didn’t feel right. You might have items like this too. Maybe they don’t flatter your body, or they’re just uncomfortable to wear.

I realised that there’s no point in keeping this type of clothes in my wardrobe. I’m obviously not going to wear them if they don’t make me feel good. 

If I go out in one of those items that makes me feel insecure, it’s going to affect my confidence levels; it’s going to affect how I feel throughout the day. Why would I do that to myself?

The whole point here is to have a wardrobe full of items that we love and that make us feel good about ourselves.

14. Items we keep because of sunk cost

There’s something called “the sunk cost fallacy,” and it goes like this: because we’ve already paid that money or invested in an item, we tend to feel like we have to get our money’s worth. 

We are very loss-averse, so it’s really hard for us to accept sometimes that that money is gone. But that’s the reality: once we purchase that item, the money is gone. 

The only way to avoid that is to be more intentional with our shopping. But once that item is in our wardrobe, just keeping it there doesn’t get our money back. 

What might get a bit of our money back is maybe trying to sell it. But even if we can’t sell it, we can still donate it to somebody who can actually use it.

15. Excessive loungewear

I used to have loads of loungewear, pyjamas and things like that. They’re cosy and they’re cute, but we don’t really need a lot of them. So this is another category that’s usually quite easy to declutter as well. 

Read here how I got rid of 80% of my clothes.

Let me know if this resonated with you and if you have any items like this that you’re looking to declutter. The way you feel in the morning getting dressed is going to completely change, and I think that’s going to make for a happier you.