Wow, almost 4 months of working from home (and pretty much staying at home). I never imagined that I would miss getting dressed for the office, but I sure do wish I put on a dress every now and again. Even though they are not all that exciting, I have continued to diligently record what I have been wearing during the past few months and I was as curious as (I hope) you are to see the outcomes.
If you are wondering what I am on about, check out how I decided to record every single thing I wore every single day for a year. I called it One Year Wardrobe Count project. The full Year 1 results can be read here, Year 2 Quarter 1 here and Year 2 Quarter 2 here.
So, let’s see what the numbers are for the first three months of lockdown.
WARDROBE TRACKER – SPRING NUMBERS
MY TOP 15 MOST WORN ITEMS
I didn’t even have to exclude shoes and outerwear this time, because I pretty much lived in my slippers and didn’t really go out all that much. The underlined and bold listed ones are made by me and the ones marked with a * are new for this period.
| Item | Total |
| Denim cut-offs | 35 |
| Dark straight leg jeans | 12 |
| Grey cardigan* | 11 |
| Beige shorts | 10 |
| Red Ginger Jeans | 10 |
| Hairy Otter t-shirt | 8 |
| Navy v-neck t-shirt | 8 |
| Black Anima joggers | 6 |
| Navy cable jumper | 6 |
| Striped v-neck jumper | 6 |
| Navy skinny jeans | 5 |
| Lavender jumper | 4 |
| Navy Addison blouse | 4 |
| Pale green crew neck t-shirt | 4 |
| Striped red and white t-shirt | 4 |
I have to give a shout out to my new pink and grey Sneaker Kit trainers (see blog post here), which were the only thing I wore outside (when I wasn’t exercising).
To add that for the first few months, I went out for the daily exercise weain
A FEW OF THE TOP 10 ITEMS:
TOTAL UNIQUE ITEMS WORN IN Q3: 77 (previous Q=81), OUT OF WHICH SHOES: 5 (PREVIOUS Q=7)
MONTHLY AVERAGE: 37 ITEMS (previous Q=47)
TOTAL INDIVIDUAL ME-MADE ITEMS WORN: 32 (previous Q=35)
ME-MADE: 42% (previous Q=43%); RTW: 55% (previous Q=54%) ; REFASHIONED: 4% (previous Q=4%)
NUMBER OF ITEMS WORN ONLY ONCE (ONE TIMERS): 34 (previous Q=34)
NEWLY COUNTED VS PREVIOUS PERIOD: 6 (previous Q=7)
MOST WORN BY CATEGORY:
| Type | Category | Total |
| Clothing | Top | 18 |
| T-shirt | 13 | |
| Jumper | 12 | |
| Dress | 6 | |
| Cardigan | 5 | |
| Trousers | 5 | |
| Shorts | 4 | |
| Jeans | 3 | |
| Jumpsuit | 2 | |
| Outerwear | 2 | |
| Jacket | 1 | |
| Shirt | 1 | |
| Clothing Total | 72 | |
| Footwear | Flats | 2 |
| Trainers | 2 | |
| Sandals | 1 | |
| Footwear Total | 5 | |
| Grand Total | 77 |
MOST WORN COLOURS:
| Colour | This Q | Previous Q |
| Blue | 25% | 19% |
| Black | 22% | 35% |
| Green | 9% | 5% |
| White | 9% | 6% |
| Grey | 8% | 14% |
| Stripes | 8% | N/A |
| Red | 6% | 4% |
| Beige | 4% | 5% |
| Pink | 4% | 4% |
Movements
This is about how many new items made it into my wardrobe this period and how many were taken out, for various reasons. To note that the ‘out’ category refers to items that I had already recorded in the spreadsheet (i.e. have been worn since Oct 2018).
IN: 2, of which 2 sewn
OUT: 0
FANCY TRACKING YOUR WARDROBE TOO?
WARDROBE TRACKER – SPRING INSIGHTS
OVERALL
I could not wait to crunch the numbers this quarter. It’s been a very unusual period. I slightly changed my rules, where I don’t normally track what I wear around the house (unless it’s street clothes, for example, if we have guests). But now pretty much all I wore was inside, so I tracked pretty much everything. The only exception was my running kit, which I did not count. I only have a few items that I rotate very often.
So many items that I only wear on holiday (high summer clothes) or just around the house (plain t-shirts) have been added to the tracker, so the overall tally is coming closer to reality now.
SAVE THIS FOR LATER ON PINTEREST
TRACKING
In lockdown, it was both easier and harder to track. Easier because I had a lot of time to do it every day. Harder because if I missed a few days, it was so much harder to remember what I wore, as there were no points of reference. But I managed to keep my track record intact.
SAVE THIS FOR LATER ON PINTEREST
ACQUISITION
Because of lockdown, this period was pretty much stationary. After the initial weirdness at the beginning, my sewjo came back with a vengeance. I was really in the mood to sew in the past few months, but I managed the ‘I want to sew all things’ vs ‘I don’t want to add things to my wardrobe’ conflict by sewing for other people. I made a dress for my sister, two for two friends and sewing loads and loads of face masks. I also made a jumpsuit for a Fibre Mood collaboration that I didn’t get to wear yet, so that didn’t get recorded yet. Overall, only two items that actually made into the wardrobe (plus a pair of running leggings), which is not too bad. I have put some items in purgatory, to see how much I will miss them over the summer, but it’s not unlikely they will be gone by autumn.
From a sewing perspective, almost still on track with my 12/year new clothes in the wardrobe, with 6 sewn in 6 months (+1 pair of trainers and 1 pair running leggings), although the tracker does not quite reflect that as I haven’t worn them all yet.
WEARING
In this period I wore 6 new items (all new to the wardrobe). A very slight improvement on last time, but they were all items I had not tracked before. So bringing more things into rotation. Predictably, I pretty much stuck to the same old comfortable things, as I reached out for them as soon as the weather got warmer. Not wearing much outerwear and footwear also helped keep things tight.
CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the numbers were better than expected. Spring is a transitional period and we had some very cold snaps at the beginning of April and then a massive heatwave in late June. So I was surprised that I managed to keep things so tight. Still, 77 items when I didn’t get out of the house much make one wonder how minimalist I am after all…
And still no clear-out! I managed to find more interesting things to do.
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