Minimal Capsule Wardrobe Tips: How To Maintain A Minimalist Wardrobe

This post is all about how to maintain a minimal capsule wardrobe!

Have you created a capsule wardrobe you love or a minimal wardrobe that has everything you need?

Great! Minimal wardrobes have tons of benefits and really make your life easier. These types of wardrobes do come with challenges, however, when it comes to maintaining and keeping your wardrobe minimal. This is especially true if you enjoy shopping!

To maintain a minimal capsule wardrobe, you need to periodically audit your wardrobe and replace old items that you no longer need or use anymore. I’m always looking to declutter my wardrobe further and improve it in any way.

Maintaining this minimalist wardrobe takes a decluttering mindset and will certainly pay off!

In this post, we’ll cover some helpful ways you can maintain your minimalist capsule wardrobe!

Keep reading for more!

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Table of Contents

What Are The Steps to Maintain A Minimal Capsule Wardrobe?

Here are the steps to maintain a minimalist capsule wardrobe:

Pay Attention To The Clothes You Use (& Don’t Use)
Perform A Wardrobe Audit
Determine If Your Needs/Style Has Changed
Shop For New Clothes

How Can You Maintain a Minimal Wardrobe?

If you’re new to decluttering and creating a minimal capsule wardrobe, welcome!

You’ll first want to start decluttering your wardrobe if you haven’t already. Because in this post we will cover how you can maintain the minimalist wardrobe that you’ve created and sustain it for years to come.

To maintain a minimal capsule wardrobe, you’re gonna need to always be in the decluttering mindset. This means always looking to get rid of or improve your current wardrobe in different ways.

Maybe some of your clothes don’t fit any longer or maybe you just simply don’t enjoy certain clothing pieces the way you did in the past.

If this is the case, then be on the lookout to declutter and edit your wardrobe and remove clothing whenever you think necessary.

Why It’s Important to Maintain a Minimalist Wardrobe?

It’s vital to maintain a minimalist wardrobe because if you don’t maintain and sustain the minimal capsule wardrobe that you have created, then all of the fruits of your labor will go to waste.

In other words, the hard work you put into decluttering and downsizing your wardrobe will not last and you’ll be back to square one decluttering all over again.

This is why it’s best to periodically check in to see how your wardrobe is being used, what clothes can continue to stay, and what needs to go or be replaced!

1. Pay Attention To The Clothes You Use (& Don’t Use)

The first step to maintaining your minimalist wardrobe starts with looking at the clothes you already have in your wardrobe.

Ask yourself these questions when reflecting on your minimal wardrobe:

Have I worn these clothes in the past 3 months?
Do these clothes still fit?
Are these clothes old/broken/outdated?

Once you’ve checked and asked yourself these questions, practically determine which clothes you don’t use.

Because by now with a minimal capsule wardrobe, most of your clothes should be your favorite and worn most of the time (depending on the season).

In order to practically determine which clothes you actually wear, try implementing the reverse hanger method.

This method involves flipping all of your hangers in the opposite direction. Every time you go to wear a new piece of clothing, flip the hanger back to the “normal” position on your rack.

This is a clear and easy way to determine which clothes have not been touched and the clear and easy results might surprise you!

2. Perform A Wardrobe Audit

Now that we’ve found a way to weed out the clothes that we don’t wear, we need to further assess which clothes we need, which clothes we love, and which clothes can be replaced or upgraded.

We need to execute a wardrobe audit!

Go through your entire capsule wardrobe. Wash beforehand so that you have mostly everything either hung up on a minimalist clothes rack or laid out on your bed.

You can organize your clothes in different ways depending on how many clothes you have. Here are a few ways to organize them:

By season
By color
By favorite clothing
By work clothes
By casual wear

Now that you’ve determined how you’re gonna organize your wardrobe, you need to categorize it.

In this case, we’re gonna keep it simple and categorize it only by:

Keep
Remove
Replace

We only need these categories because at this point we aren’t decluttering an oversized wardrobe, we’re only maintaining a minimal capsule wardrobe.

You can choose to sell or give away the clothes you decide to remove, but for now, we just want to remove the items we don’t want or need anymore and place them off to the side.

3. Determine If Your Needs/Style Has Changed

The final factor to help you maintain your minimalist wardrobe, would be to assess your needs and style!

Your needs and style can be determined by a few different life changes that you’ve made since creating your initial minimal capsule wardrobe.

Your Needs

Your minimalist wardrobe needs can be commonly determined by a new job and possibly a move to a warmer or colder climate.

A new job may require you to have more fancy clothes or even just a few new outfits to look presentable. On the other hand, your new job could be remote, and thus the “work” clothes you originally had are not needed any longer.

When it comes to moving to different climates, this can either cause you to add more items in the case of colder climates or reduce items for warmer climates.

If you move to say Michigan from California, then chances are you’re gonna need to add more cold weather clothing and expand your minimalist wardrobe a bit to contend with the weather.

The good thing is the fact that this is a need and a minimalist wardrobe is all about wearing and having what you need! And enjoying it of course!

So don’t worry about “adding” more items to your wardrobe in this case.

On the other hand, moving from New York to Florida would allow you to reduce your wardrobe significantly.

Your Style

Your style is one of the best parts of a minimalist wardrobe. If you’ve gone through and removed a few items from your minimal capsule wardrobe, take a look at your current style and how you like to present yourself.

Do your favorite clothes still reflect that?

If so great! But if not, then further remove items that don’t match that style.

This style can be replicated in your wardrobe in many ways. Here are a few different ways your style might have changed:

You’ve chosen a new color palette for your minimal capsule wardrobe
You like to wear more “dressy” and formal clothing
You enjoy casual clothing and want to remove some of your more formal attire
You’ve decided to gravitate to different style trends (the 80s,90s, minimalist, trendy, etc.)

If your style has changed drastically then keep the clothing items that match your style and get rid of the other clothes immediately.

Next: You’ll be shopping to replace these other items.

Note: Even if you haven’t completely revamped your minimal wardrobe, you can still shop to replace those old items that you’re getting rid of!

4. Shop For New Clothes

Now comes the fun part! You can enjoy shopping for new clothes even as a minimalist. However, you need to remember to stay within your limits!

Remember that you’re shopping not only to “replace” clothes for your capsule wardrobe but to also shop with a plan. We don’t want to be overspending and buying too many clothes!

Here are some things to keep in mind when shopping for your minimal capsule wardrobe:

Remember to replace old clothes
Watch your spending
Remember your planned color pallete
Make sure the new clothes match your other clothing
Make sure your new clothes match your new style
Make sure these are clothes that you need

Final Thoughts On Maintaining a Minimal Capsule Wardrobe

Minimalist wardrobes are great but maintaining a simple wardrobe can be difficult! Make sure to keep the necessary clothes you need and to avoid adding too many unnecessary clothes.

What other ways do you think you can maintain a minimal capsule wardrobe?

Leave any questions or comments below!