8 Helpful Tips To Keep A Minimalist Closet When You Can't Stop Buying Clothes

8 Helpful Tips to Keep a Minimalist Closet When You Can’t Stop Buying Clothes

Are you looking to simplify your wardrobe or declutter your clothes to create a minimalist closet?

I think most of us have way more clothes than we really need in our closet.

This is due to us overshopping and simply buying clothes we don’t need or may only wear a few times.

This puts a strain on our wallets and over time creates a closet full of clothes we barely touch year after year.

Knowing that most people have this overcluttered closet issue, what about those who want to declutter their closets or even those who want to declutter their closet, but can’t stop buying new clothes.

Here are some ways to declutter your closet and create a minimalist wardrobe even if you can’t stop buying clothes:

Delete Any Mobile Shopping Apps
Create a Budget
Wait 1-2 Weeks Before Making a Purchase
Create a Goal or Challenge
Learn How to Create a Minimalist Wardrobe
Buy New Clothes to Replace Old Clothes
Allow Yourself To Buy New Clothes in Cycles
Determine Which Clothes You Don’t Wear

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8 Helpful Tips to Keep a Minimalist Closet When You Can’t Stop Buying Clothes

1. Delete Any Mobile Shopping Apps

This is a must if you want to have a minimalist closet and create a minimal wardrobe!

Apps and online shopping have made clothes shopping wayyyy too easy nowadays and you can easily spend hundreds without even knowing it!

I would highly advise you to delete any and all shopping apps even if they aren’t clothes apps.

These can include:

Amazon (duh)
Fashion Nova
H&M
SHEIN
Macy’s
Old Navy
Victoria’s Secret
Kohl’s
JCPenney

I know deleting these apps will be hard but ya gotta rip the bandaid!!

If you wanna see some changes in your shopping and spending habits, you need to make some practical changes.

Deleting these apps is like choosing not to buy junk food and chips when you’re at the grocery store.

If this junk food is already in your home, you’re much more likely to fall into temptation and indulge.

However the opposite will be true if you can remove the temptation from your space.

Now you may be saying, but hold on, can’t I just redownload these apps if I feel tempted and want to buy something!?

And my answer to that would be…Yes…

But wait, because in this post we will give you tips and strategies that will help give you a reason to think twice if you want to redownload these apps.

And that’s not to say that you won’t redownload them, but hopefully, these tips are a disciplinary strategy to hopefully halt your impulsivity and pause before making so many purchases and cluttering up your closet.

So don’t worry we’re gonna go over how to have a minimalist wardrobe even when your shopping addiction takes over and you have trouble deleting these apps!

If you’re dedicated to creating a minimalist closet, then you will succeed! 🙂

2. Create a Budget

One of the main strategies we want to put in place when it comes to building a minimalist wardrobe is to create a budget and track your spending.

If you’ve been buying clothes left and right and have basically no sense of self-control or awareness of how much you’re actually spending, then budgeting is gonna be a serious eye-opener.

And when I say budget, I don’t just want you to plan out how much you’ll spend for different categories like groceries, gas, food, etc., I want you to track each and every expense and know exactly how much money you’re spending on this stuff.

Once you’re able to realize the financial situation you’re putting yourself in, this should hopefully start to deter any more clothes-shopping binge ideas.

Retail Therapy

And often times when we purchase things in this way we are using it as mood stabilization and may actually have problems in our lives that we are trying to avoid.

This can be caused by stress and many other life factors.

Or it can be when you’re bored… Go figure

But whichever the cause may be, you may want to sit back and reflect on why you feel the urge to shop and look for clothes constantly.

This is called retail therapy, and can definitely make you feel better, however, if there are real-world problems in your life, then this is just a bandaid and you need to go to the root cause.

living on a budget, Simple Monthly Budget spreadsheet Google Sheets

How to Create a Minimalist Budget

Now when it comes to creating this budget, there are multiple ways you can go about it.

Here are the popular ways of creating a budget:

Using printables
Pen and paper
Word or Google document
Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet

All of these methods are great and work for different people!

I personally love using an Excel or Google Sheets Spreadsheet!

I love budgeting with this method because it keeps everything organized and completes all of my calculations for me!

On this site, we have created those exact spreadsheets that I use to track my expenses and you can find them in our Shop.

They are all premade and come in different colors 🙂

This will save you time and allow you to stay on top of your finances!

But most importantly help you to stop buying clothes and create a minimalist closet!

3. Wait 1-2 Weeks Before Making a Purchase

If you’ve ever had trouble with impulse spending (and obviously if you’re here then you have a problem buying clothes) then this tip can really help you to at least attempt to wait and gave your purchase some thought.

It may be jarring at first, however, this can prove to be an incredibly powerful tool to realize what needless spending looks like.

Let me explain…

Back in 2019 when I was spending like crazy and ordering from Amazon almost daily, I had no concept of saving or waiting to purchase items.

However, when I wanted to change this, I implemented this type of strategy and it was an eye-opening experience.

Even though at times I’d still make the purchase when given enough time (a few weeks to a month) oftentimes I would find myself editing the item to a different version of the item or removing the item from my cart entirely!!

I mean can you believe that!!!

Now imagine that happening for multiple products that I had planned to buy…

This means that most of the stuff I wanted to purchase, was stuff so insignificant or unnecessary that just given time I didn’t even want it!!

Huge Facepalm -____-

This is the big deception that shopping can have on us when we’re in the moment.

That excitement hits us and just as soon as we’ve made the purchase, that feeling dissipates slightly and we need to make more purchases to get that high again.

So in realistic terms buying clothes is just like an addiction and when you keep adding more to your wardrobe you’re getting your fix.

If you want to be free from these cycles, then give this shopping tip a try!

4. Create a Goal or Challenge

Now that you’ve had a few strategies presented, let’s shoot for a goal or a challenge to build a minimalist wardrobe.

Goal: This goal can be something like trying to go a week or month without buying any clothes
Challenge: This challenge could be something like a 30-day minimalist wardrobe challenge where you give yourself a month to declutter your clothes and create a minimalist closet.

Don’t forget to create an attainable goal, if you’re really stuck and impulse clothes purchases are a serious problem just start with a few days to a week for your first goal of no clothes shopping.

Good luck! You can create a minimalist closet if you want it bad enough!

5. How to Create a Minimalist Wardrobe

In this blog, I’ve gone over extensively different ways you can declutter your closet and create a minimalist closet…

Check out these posts for a more comprehensive guide to creating a minimalist wardrobe:

After checking out some of these posts, I’d recommend creating a plan for your minimalist wardrobe and setting some limits.

Create a maximum limit of clothing pieces ex. 33, this way whenever you’re tempted to purchase new items just know that if something is added, another item needs to be removed.

6. Buy New Clothes to Replace Old Clothes

When you buy items to be replaced and set a reasonable limit on clothing pieces (not including houseware, pajamas, underwear, etc.), this can help you to create boundaries that hopefully discourage you from buying clothes that don’t align with your minimalist wardrobe or capsule wardrobe.

7. Allow Yourself To Buy New Clothes in Cycles

This is where the fun begins if you’re a natural shopper…

Around every 3 months check on your wardrobe and asses if you’d like to make some changes.

This type of minimalist wardrobe audit is great for making sure:

Your clothes still fit
Everything still matches your current style
Your color palette is still your favorite
Your clothes aren’t worn down or broken
You’ve determined if your style has changed and you’d like to make some adjustments

If you do choose to add new clothes, create a plan to purchase new clothes that follow your chosen color palette and match your current colors and style.

I recently did this when I decided to split my year-round capsule wardrobe into a mini seasonal capsule wardrobe to allow for some color variation.

Now my seasonal capsule wardrobe consists of cold weather and warm weather wardrobe, each with different color palettes.

This allows my summer outfits to be more colorful and gives me more flexibility in what type of outfits I can wear.

If you find this type of minimalist closet appealing, then go for it!

8. Determine Which Clothes You Don’t Wear

Lastly, take some time to determine clothes that you never wear.

When decluttering your wardrobe, this is just as important as picking out your favorite clothes and setting them aside.

I recommend giving the hanger method a try and see if this works as well.

Give this strategy a month or so, or maybe longer and you’ll know exactly what clothes you don’t touch lol.

After giving this a try or if you’ve skipped it, go through your wardrobe and determine which clothes you haven’t worn in the last few months to a year.

Then set those clothes aside.

See if you don’t really need these clothes as the months go by.

If you really don’t need these clothes then decide whether you want to donate or sell them.

Boom!!!

Now you have a solid strategy for your minimalist closet and can create a fabulous minimalist wardrobe!!