Are you one of the many who wear about 20% of your clothes 80% of the time? It’s not unusual to find that a large portion of our wardrobes rarely see the light of day. That was the case for me when I first heard about the Pareto Principle a few years ago. In a nutshell, The Pareto Principle is based on the idea that 80% of the results comes from 20% of the causes. So, applied to our closets, that would mean that 20% of the contents are being worn 80% of the time.
After this concept came on my radar, it became a good incentive to thin the bulk down to what I enjoyed wearing. Somewhere along the way though, it became clear that I didn’t have a handle on what that actually looked or felt like. Even so, I whittled things down to something along the lines of a capsule wardrobe. That ended up translating into nothing but the basics, and nothing at all too exciting.
So, here we are and once again, my closest is filled with lots of items that I’m not wearing. It sounds like it's time to get a better sense of what's going on. Maybe I’m not the only one who needs a little push to get some momentum. How about you? Is it time for a checkup using this 80/20 rule?
There are a few ways to do this:
Put all of your hangers backwards, and as you wear them, turn them the other way. Try it for a month, and see how much you have worn.
Keep a diary. Jot it down on paper, your phone, or one of those apps like Stylebook.
The selfie: take a quick selfie in the morning and track this way.
To get a ballpark idea, you could always just go in your closet and do some counting. This is what I did since I didn't want to take the time to turn my hangers, keep a journal, or do a selfie every morning! Start by doing a count of all that you have. Then, go through and start the count of what you’ve been wearing. Now, my memory should never be trusted, but just to get a foggy idea, this what I did. (You may be traumatized like me because it’s tax season, so here’s a reminder that no one is coming to audit your numbers if you mess up!) Do the math: divide how many items you own by how many you’ve been wearing.
For me, that was 22 pieces worn, 61 pieces total. A grand total of 22/61, or 36%.
I have some clothes I haven’t included (a few dresses for “just in case” occasions), so that would give me a few more in the total owned, and it would drive my percentage down a bit. I included all the clothes in my winter line up but there is always the option of breaking it up and only looking at certain groups in your wardrobe.
It did surprise me that with all my decluttering (believe me there were more than a few bags of goods hauled away), I'm still only wearing about 1 in 3 things. I didn’t set out to prove or disprove the Pareto Principle. However, I did set out to introduce the idea that our closets may be full of stuff we don’t wear because we don’t have a handle on what we want to be wearing. This is true for me and I’m wondering if it may be true for you too. With that in mind, we’ll pick this up next time by diving into Allison Bornstein’s Three Word Method, which was borne out of seeing her clients in need of getting direction on that very thing: honing in on your authentic style.
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