I’ve been feeling the need to purge around the house lately. I think we all get in these moods every now and then and for me, I’ve been feeling really fed up with having so much stuff I don’t need/use/want any more and I just want it out of the house. So this weekend, I decided to start with my closet:

It’s fairly organized but this is only about a quarter of it.

I have sort of a love/hate relationship with fashion. About 90% of the time, it’s total love. I keep up with the new collections, read all the magazines and an Oscar de la Renta gown can give me heart palpitations. But then there are days when I think the fashion industry takes itself way too seriously (It’s just clothes, people.) and I don’t want to put on more than yoga pants and a t-shirt.

But like I said, most of the time, it’s pure love and because of that, I have to admit, I have a lot of clothes. And bags. And accessories. And shoes. Oh my god, the shoes.  In the past, I’ve tried the usual guidelines – you know the ones about if you haven’t worn it in over a year, if it doesn’t fit, etc. etc. – but that’s never yielded a lot. So I took a different approach this time (which works with decorating too) and that is to clearly define your style then get rid of everything else.

That’s easier said than done, of course. Like with interiors, some days you want color, other days, neutrals; some days, sleek and minimal, other days, maximalist. You also need different looks for different occasions, activities and travels. But even with these caveats, if we really think about it, there is a style that both looks and feels best on all of us.

A great way to help figure out what that is is to look to inspirational images (again, like you would for decorating). In case you’re wondering, here are some of my inspiration images from the latest runway shows.  I’m actually really excited about the spring 2013 collections more than I have been the past few seasons.

After this little exercise, I went through my closet several times and ended up with a huge stack of things that don’t fit my style. This included a lot of bags which, when I removed them, gave me plenty of room to organize the rest of the bags fairly neatly:

With the totes, I hung them from hooks that I fixed to the top of the shelves. I used these because I had them leftover from another project but if I were to do it again, I would use something larger because these are a little small for bags with wider straps. (I may get some S-shaped shower curtain hooks and use them to hang from these if they start to drive me too crazy.)

My closet will never look like this but I’m pretty pleased with how much I was able to clear out. So what am I going to do with all of it? I normally just donate everything to Goodwill but this time I decided to try and sell some of it (there’s some great stuff in the pile!) and use the money for one or two things I’ve really been coveting as a sort of reward. I read about Threadflip which is like an online consignment shop and it sounds like it’s worth a shot. Have any of you tried it? If you have, let me know what you think.  And if you have any good strategies for editing your closet, please share those too.

(Photos: 1.via Pinterest 2,7.FROM THE RIGHT BANK 3.L.A. Closet Design 5.via Rizzoli 6.via style.com 7.istockphoto.com)