Refresh your wardrobe while saving money and waste by shopping your closet

Do you ever feel like you have a closet full of clothes but nothing to wear? What if you could see your closet in a new way?

While the dream virtual closet in the movie "Clueless" doesn’t quite exist yet, taking inventory of what you have can help tackle the biggest wardrobe challenges.

“The first one is your closet is too crammed, and it makes it difficult to even see what you have,” said Nancy Queen, a fashion blogger who publishes Shopping on Champagne.

“Second thing is that your closet is disorganized. You haven't put things together in a way to make them shoppable. So, I always recommend organizing by classification and then by color from light to dark because that will allow you to really see things so you can mix and match them instead of always grabbing a full outfit.”

Another problem, says Queen, is that a lot of people hold on to clothes that don’t fit their current lifestyles.

“Eighty percent of the clothes in your closet you're not actually wearing. So, if you clean all those things out and you're left with only the things that fit you today, that you love to wear, that you feel good in, you will have a wardrobe that you actually love that works for you,” said Queen. "Then what happens is you'll start to see little holes like, oh, you know, if I had a button-down shirt in white, I'd be able to wear it with these three shirts and these pants and layer it. And it allows you to fill in the gaps so that when you go shopping, you're shopping with intention.”

New England Stylist Ana Harris says if you identify some items in your closet that you are not wearing, but you are not ready to get rid of, store them in another space to help make it easier to find the clothing you love when you are getting ready.

“Definitely shop your own closet. When I started my business, I did not have many ways to do it. I couldn't afford the pieces that I really wanted. And I shop my own closet and I try to really see every possibility of what I could do with what I have,” said Harris.

In one of her blog posts, titled "How can I improve my closet on a low budget?" she showed how to make multiple outfits using the same shirt and pants by simply changing her shoes and jacket.

She also recommends asking your friends if they are looking to refresh their wardrobes too.

“Do a small shopping party with your friends. That's so amazing how what is not working for you can work for somebody else and vice versa. Shopping secondhand is an amazing way to also acquire new pieces and the beauty of that is that you can find pieces that nobody else has. It's not what is on the windows at stores, so you have a uniqueness to your closet with a lot of potential,” said Harris.

Queen offered this challenge to help you get started:

“Take one piece out of your wardrobe. That's a favorite of yours and think to yourself, how can I make this into five different outfits? If it's a top, how many different pants can I wear this with? How many different skirts can I wear this with, can I layer it with something else? You don't need to go and buy a new wardrobe. In fact, one of the biggest things I like to encourage is to make the most of what you already have and really maximize those pieces that are in your wardrobe. And the key is buying the pieces that are versatile.”

There are apps that help users take inventory of the items in their closet and plan outfits. It takes some work to take pictures and catalog each piece. Queen and Harris suggest some easier alternatives.

“When I was planning a capsule wardrobe for a video, what I did was I took pieces of paper and just did little sketches of each item and then lined them up,” said Queen. “It was almost like a little match game and that's basically what you're doing with the capsule wardrobe, with the app.”

“One advice that I gave to all my clients is photograph their outfits. If you photograph all your outfits, even if you make a folder on your phone, you can compare them, you can try to understand a little bit more about how things fit on you. You are able to remember when you wake up, you don't have an inspiration, looking through those photos, it's an amazing tool,” said Harris.

“And what that helps is that while you go shopping, we gravitate for the same things. So honestly, you will go, and you'll find pants just like the ones you have at home because this is your comfort zone. But then you open your app, or you open your photos, and you see, oh, I already have five pants very similar to those. And that help you to avoid purchasing things they already have. I think that's very powerful.”