Purging methods (for closets, that is...)

You all continue to inform and delight with your awesome comments. Keep 'em coming.

It sounds like almost everyone posting here is a seasoned wardrobe purger. I'd love to hear exactly how you do it -- how do you make decisions at the level of the individual piece of clothing to keep or ditch.

Here's what I did this year to get to my 52-piece goal:

Step 1 was maintaining a rigd "frequency filing" system in my (half of the) closet. In January, with all the winter clothes still in the closet, I stuck a pink plastic hangar on the far left of the clothes bar, like this:

Then as I hung up each item that had been worn, it was returned to the far left also (just to the right of that hanging shoe rack you can see). As the weeks went by, it was really easy to see which clothes were being worn regularly and which hadn't been touched since early January.

By the time March rolled around and it was time to swap out winter for spring/summer clothes, I could pretty easily eliminate everything to the right of the pink hangar.

I did something similar with the folded t-shirts and sweaters on the upper shelves of the closet -- everything that got worn, washed and returned to the closet went on the lower left, and gradually got moved right and then up as other items were worn and put away. I should have done the same thing with undies, tights, tank tops and sleepwear, but I didn't.

This system is a terrific way to teach visual learners or your kids or anyone else who is remotely interested about the 80/20 rule.  (See the link for more info, but in general the rule says that 80% of effects/outputs come from 20% of inputs/causes). In this case, it's clear that 20% of our clothing makes up 80% of what we wear over time. (You probably spend 80% of your social time with 20% of your friends, and spend 80% of your overall grocery bill on 20% of the most frequent/expensive items you buy. Most business earn 80% of their revenues from the top 20% of customers, etc....).

Two other purge techniques that worked for me:

1. During the seasonal swap out, I scrutinized every item going into or coming out of a large plastic Sterilite tub. Tried to be ruthless about stuff that didn't fit, didn't feel good, didn't look good, had stains, or was otherwise flawed.

2. Sticking with the 80/20 rule, I tried to ask myself, "If I needed or wanted to wear something in this category, would I ever choose *this* item over that one I like better over there?" If no, then go.

I also was able to toss a lot of cute summery stuff that didn't make it into the suitcase for a three-week trip to Hawaii. If you don't pack that cute beach cover up/ mini skirt / batik wrap/ sundress /tankini when you're on your way to Hawaii for three weeks, then you're never going to wear it.

Tell me your purging stories!

Today's outfit: White sort of Japanese-y button down shirt (from QT) that I love but has bad armpit stains (sorry, gross, TMI) and groovy print stretch pants that I bought (@ QT) for a dinner celebrating one of my husband's many accomplishments. My mother-in-law (whose opinion I respect) doesn't like them,  but I do. Also made the mistake of wearing both a bra and a shelf-bra-cami-tank thing, so was hot and claustrophobic all day...