Project 333: I'm thinking about doing it. I know people who have (I'm looking at you, PoMoGolightly), and have loved it.
It goes like this: You clean out your closet, trashing the trashed clothes, donating the ones that don't fit you or your style, keeping only the things that you LOVE. From those, you winnow them down into 33 things (including shoes, purse, jewelry) to wear for the next three months. Three months later, you can reevaluate, going through your LOVE box, pulling out, tossing, putting away.
In this, I wouldn't (couldn't) include my uniform clothes, and you also don't include things like underwear, sleepwear, workout clothes. As a Knitter, I will aslo exclude knitted items that I have no intention of getting rid of, which will open it up a bit. (I make the rules! Yes, I do!) What you're looking at is your everyday wardrobe. Wouldn't it be freeing to have limited choices, all of which you love? My closet is impossibly small (I mean TINY) and I'm constantly irritated by how much I have to fight to keep the clothes corralled.
Oooh, I like this article on Living in the Land of Enough – Space.
This could be interesting. I'll keep you posted. In the meantime, I'm off to the store to buy jeans that fit, because I've been complaining about my one pair of jeans for EONS (they're too big, have always been too big, and I hate wearing them, but wear them I do).
Also: Just got a very nice review in the New York Journal of Books - "Wishes and Stitches delivers a heroine with enough issues to be convincingly difficult to love, a hero who’s immensely likeable, several steamy love scenes, and a comfortably familiar small town setting. All in all, a pleasant read for a fall afternoon."
I like that the reviewer found Naomi difficult to love. That was the trickiest part of writing her, and this is my prediction: extroverted people (Jasmin!) will find her difficult to understand and shy people (Gigi!) will empathize with her problems. Tell me what you think!
I read it all in one sitting and LOVED it. I’ll probably read it again. But she’s right, Naomi was difficult for me to love, but I did love her in the end. I loved her interaction with Anna. Also, I’m getting married (in a little less than 2 years) and I was looking all over for a wedding shawl… well… 🙂
As far as 333, that sounds scary to me… I’m afraid to do something like that. I wonder why?
333 sounds like an awesome idea- once I’m back in my regular clothes again. Maybe next year for me.
Also, PHEW that I’m not the only one who had a hard time liking/understanding Naomi.
Project 333 sounds like an awesome idea for my daughters. We were already planning to do a purge of their closets but I didn’t really have an idea of how many items to let them keep. This gives me a guideline.
For myself, I’m in the opposite situation. For about five years, I didn’t feel like buying or making myself anything. Then the scales fell from my eyes last year and I realized that I was looking like a crazy shabby old cat lady, minus the cats :-). So now I am trying to make myself buy some respectable well-fitting clothing that isn’t stained or frayed.
Can’t wait to read it! My copy is in the mail, since I insist on having you on paper by my bedside–no silly Kindle copy for me!
Oh the 333 thing sounds good. I have a friend who was getting mentally weighed down by her closet (house built in 1920s=small closet too) so I went to her house and made her try on every piece of clothing and if it didn’t fit I but it into the donate pile. No “maybe somedays” and multiples of the same item (Steve Jobs-esque) went too. It was work and I had to be mean but she felt so much freer when it was done. I took the bags straight to Goodwill so there was no turning back. Good luck with your pare down!
Congrats on good reiviews, but we all just say “of course!”
Project 333 CHANGED MY LIFE! I did it for four rounds, and it was incredible. I have purged so many clothes, and I feel freer for it! Do it! Do it! After the first round, I lumped jewelry as one item ( I don’t have those silver bracelets I buy in NM as rewards to let them rot!) and hand knits as one item. I’m getting ready to start a NEW minimalist project: 52/52. Yup: fifty-two items for the entire year. In a four-season climate, no less!
DO IT!
I haven’t done anything that formal with clothes, but I do go through mine often and clear out anything I don’t love. If I’m always reaching past it for something else, it goes.
In the same vein, when I’m shopping for clothes (at thrift stores always, because I’m cheap and I like the thrill of the hunt) I always imagine that I’m pulling open my dresser drawer to get ready in the morning. Which things am I always hoping to find miraculously clean and folded, even if I know I wore them yesterday?
I always feel like I have too many clothes until I read things like that Project 333 page. I own four pairs of pants and ten shirts, a couple dresses, and a suit. That puts me under the limit right away. It helps that I haven’t worked an office job in years. But mostly it’s because some time ago I decided I didn’t want to think about what I was going to wear every day, and began dressing in a uniform. Older, worn clothes turn into dirty work clothes, so I am often seen working in my garden in a pair of pinstripe trousers and a blouse.
I know I’m not the only one who LOVED Naomi. But the others are maybe too shy to comment?? It’s really hard being shy, and it’s really hard to join in groups when you ALWAYS feel like you don’t belong.
Good luck with the clothes thing….let us know how it goes!
Since I have STILL not lost my baby weight (nor some pre-baby weight, sigh), but am finally working on it, I surely have fewer than 33 items that I regularly wear. And I have grown to mostly hate them! I am so sick of them all. But probably because they aren’t clothes I love, that makes a difference.
I sort of feel like I’m living Project 333 by default at the moment due to refusing to buy excessive amounts of maternity clothing. I am certainly not up to 33 pieces, but that would be about right to get me through this baby showing up in February. Maybe I should winnow out the things I feel “meh” about right now in my regular wardrobe so there’s no question about it later. Hmmm… a nesting project in the making.
A friend of mine was on What Not to Wear and after tossing all her clothes, they let her keep her handspun handknit sweaters. She said that if she knew the name of the animal the fiber came from, she just couldn’t throw them away.
She came home with great wardrobe ideas, some of which I have borrowed. I still need to implement the tossing away part though.
333 is a brilliant idea besides donating most of the useless clothes will be much appreciated from those who really need them.
I loved Naomi too. I was at my daughter’s dance class when I read the part at Lucy’s party. I was bawling – felt like a dope. Being on the shy side and not a joiner, I really felt for her. I think she is a very interesting and sympathetic character.