This is my complete wardrobe: a total of about forty shirts (mainly tees) and pants, and zero suits or jackets.
I’ve learned this is not a minimalist wardrobe. Web sites like The Essential Man (“Style Advice for Grown Men”) recommend fourteen pieces, assuming you do laundry once a week.
I’m realizing I can do better.
Minimalism Gives Me Joy
Minimalism gives me joy, whether it’s music, architecture, or how we arrange our home. The Japanese concept of Ma: the Space Between strongly resonates with me.
In a previous post I wrote about the joy I get from traveling light.
For me, freedom is traveling light with just one change of clothes. That still translates into wearing clean clothes every day.
Travel Gear: Clean Clothes
I feel a calmness when I walk into a beautiful, minimal space. I want our master closet to be one of those spaces.
Achieving a Minimal Closet
In 2017, my partner and I sold our house and moved into a temporary apartment while a condo we had purchased was being built.
Two home moves in just over a year have helped us to dispatch many clothes to Goodwill and a fabric recycler. Having just forty items in my wardrobe is an achievement, but it’s not sufficiently minimal.
Marie Kondo, Japan’s decluttering guru, recommends placing all the clothes on the floor, then only returning clothes to the rail that “spark joy.” With the home moves, I’ve gone through her process, but with limited success. Clothes are not a strong source of joy for me: I’d end up with no clothes.
Next week we start moving into our new condo. I will reverse-hang my forty pieces of clothing in the closet, so the clothes all face to the left. When I launder an item, I will hang it back in the closet, not reversed, facing to the right. At the end of 12 months, all items that are still reversed will make a quick journey to Goodwill.
And maybe we’ll invest in a consistent set of wooden hangers.