What my suitcase told me about my closet.

Meet my suitcase. I've been living out of this little gem for pretty much the entire summer. Between destination weddings, travel for Relevant, travel to see Matt in Nashville, going back to our love pad when Matt's back in Iowa, sleeping in my sister's room when Matt is not in Iowa, and just general chaos, I have forgone my closet this summer and opted for my beautiful little red carry on size suitcase with the trademark decoupage stain dried on the back.

And thus happens my epiphany this morning. I'm driving over to the above mentioned "love pad" after working out to straighten things up since Matt will finally be spending some time here in Iowa. Suddenly I'm thinking about transporting my little suitcase back to our place and I'm thinking, why do I even have a closet? Since the beginning of the summer when I took my first trip out to Nashville I've pretty much had the same clothes in this suitcase. I haven't returned to my closet to get different clothes which means I must really not need very many of the clothes that are left in my closet.

I'm usually pretty good about getting rid of old clothes to drop off at Goodwill but I will be the first to admit that half of my closet I hadn't worn in 2 years and kept thinking to myself "I don't want to get rid of this because it was expensive, I've hardly worn it, and maybe I'll wear it for something random one day."

Today I decided to quit talking myself into keeping these things and have purged almost my entire closet with the exception of what I've been carrying around in my suitcase, a few dresses I wear on special occasions, my sweatshirts/sweaters for winter, and my skiing clothes.

You have no idea how freeing this is to me.

First of all, my sister is going to think I'm crazy. She never fails to tell me that I don't have enough clothes as it is because I've never exactly been on the top tier of the fashion world. Both her and Katie tease me that all I wear is yoga pants. It usually is true but now I'll have the excuse that it's pretty much all I have to wear :)

I took out all of my hangers that weren't white plastic (We had alot of weird random hangers...where do these things come from?) and have decided that if it doesn't fit on the hangers available in the closet, I'm not keeping it.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, I am intrigued by the simplicity of Amish lifestyle. I love the simplicity of not cluttering my life with unnecessary things. In the last 6 months this desire for simplicity has become a growing part of my life. Matt & I started eating healthy & working out 6 days a week which in itself has simplified and structured our lives. Now I'm moving on to other areas and today my closet made it's initiation into the simple lifestyle.

I wonder what's next...