how to do a closet edit.

Remember how I was so nervous about my first closet consultation? 

That was all for nothing.  I even mentioned the awkward pretend boyfriend thing and, after Bridget got done laughing so hard she cried, we were able to get some major outfits put together in spite of my stalker tendencies.

I headed to Bridget’s house early one morning to go through all her clothes and figure out what outfits she has for fall/winter and what she wants to add.  She’s a physical education teacher during the day so doesn’t have a lot of need for dressy or casual clothes–she’s active and needs to be able to run around with kids.  But she felt like she didn’t have any cute clothes to wear outside of her job (to church, a birthday party, shopping, for date night with her husband, etc.).

The first thing we did was put her whole closet into two piles: one pile for clothes that would work for cooler weather, she still liked, and she’d wear.  The second pile was summery clothes or things she didn’t like anymore.  (After I left, she went through and decided what would go to Goodwill and what she wanted to keep.)

In the pile we were working with there was probably about 20 tops and sweaters, 7-9 pairs of pants (colored skinnies, jeans, leggings, etc.), one skirt, and 4-6 dresses.  Plenty of pieces to work with.

I started with a pair of pants and put together as many top combinations as I could think of.  Bridget took a picture of each outfit and we talked about what else might work with the pieces (later she printed all the pictures and hung up in her closet so she could have an outfit idea without much thought).  We did this for every skirt, pair of pants, and dress she had.  We did a lot of layering and belting things, blazers with lace tops, dresses as shirts, and print mixing.  Bridget had lots of neutral colors and classic pieces that made putting new looks together really easy.  As we went, I made a list of things that she could add to the look or pieces that she could incorporate into many of her looks.

I’m all about not spending a lot of money to update your wardrobe and Bridget just needed more accessories, jackets, and/or shoes to complete her looks and then come up with many more.

Here are two of my favorite looks we put together featuring an awesome teal  high/low hem top:

We talked a lot about how accessories can dress those outfits (and others) up or down.  We came up with lots of different ways to wear one outfit which made Bridget happy especially since she and her cute husband just bought a beautiful new house and want to spend their money on that instead of a new clothes right now.

At this point in the consult, we had thirty one outfits put together.  I had to cut out a little early to head to a dentist appointment (no cavaties!!) and we had about 7-8 tops that hadn’t even been touched yet.  We spent about two hours total doing our closet portion of the consult (with lots of talking too, so it might have only been an hour of true clothes time). 

Then a few days later, we met up to go shopping.  Our list from closet clean-out day was pretty simple: