I Tracked What I Wore All Month. Here’s What I Learned

My closet is of modest size, and I share it with my husband. After not buying clothes for all of 2022, and selling/ gifting/ donating/ eventually recycling unusable clothing, I thought I was a minimalist. So I decided to follow the Eco-Fashion Influencer trend and catalogue everything in my closet. Then, I tracked everything I wore (minus lingerie) for the entire month of June.

Wardrobe Tracking Methods

Using Google Sheets, I started writing down every piece I wore in a list and then adding an X under the date I wore the item.

For ease of finding the items, I added a Category. Some of the bloggers I follow had much more elaborate systems, but this is what I did to get started.

After only a few days, I realized picking up the iPad for every outfit change was not sustainable for me because of how time-consuming it was. So when I was strapped for time, I just took a selfie or asked my husband to snap a pic. Then I could go over it later.

What I Learned After One Month

I Change Outfits A Lot

Working from home has its benefits, and one of them is that I’m not committed to any particular outfit all day. I would wear slides around the house with comfy shorts and a tee for work, then add a blouse for on-camera Zoom, then change to jean shorts and sneakers to walk the dog, then workout clothes to go jogging or Pure Barre, then some sweats to do chores and hang out.

Not As Minimal As I Thought

As an aspiring minimalist who spent an entire year not buying clothing, I thought I’d pared down to the capsule pretty well. The reality: I wore over 105+ pieces just in June! That’s about what the average person owns.

So I went a step further, the way most experts recommend, and I catalogued my entire closet. You can see below in the spreadsheet I created for July that everything is there from the beginning, color-coded, with 250+ pieces starting out. This got me thinking differently about my closet, remembering pieces I owned and reminding me of pieces I wanted to list.

While not minimal, I realized listing everything would help me identify things I don’t wear or need. It also helped me not accidentally list pieces more than once, which definitely happened in June.

Not Every Outfit Is A Winner

This was definitely eye-opening, and another sign that I need to scale back my closet. Can I create a nice outfit from some of these things, or am I purely holding onto them sentimentally?

The fact remains, having a capsule wardrobe would be the first step in ensuring that I had at least a nice outfit every day. But certain pieces, maybe they just have to move on if I can’t style them right.

Pieces Need to Go

In addition to questioning several items I wore that I wasn’t crazy about, I discovered items at the end of their lifespan sitting in my closet. Definitely a sign that I own too much if these were in my closet unnoticed!