recycle boutique | organised castle

At the beginning of January I turned all of the coathangers in my wardrobe around. The idea behind this is that once an item has been worn you replace the hanger in the correct manner. This provides an easy way to identify those items which have not been worn.

Since the past month has been recorded as the hottest ever start to the year in Australia, it is no surprise to find that jackets, cardigans, jeans and trousers were not worn in January. Of the seasonally appropriate items, there are a couple of tops and 3 skirts which have not yet been worn. I am sure their time will come.

The other thing I decided to do was not to buy any new clothes in January. This was not entirely successful depending on your definition of ‘new’. I bought 3 items that are new to me during the month. We have a local recycle boutique which I check out from time to time. I am fairly selective and only choose pieces that are absolutely perfect for me and I could not go past these.

Patterned cropped jeans

2019-02-02 01

Sleeveless cowl neck top

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Long sleeve white linen shirt

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Although none of them had tags attached, I am pretty sure that they are all unworn.

Finally, I moved three items out of my wardrobe. The first was a pair of jeans I bought in 2012. They have had a lot of wear and are getting pretty thin as well as somewhat faded and stained. They are are now in the pile of clothes to be worn around the house and when gardening. Similarly a sleeveless tshirt top has seen better days so met the same fate. A pair of white shorts went in the bin as the elastane had all given way and they were not in a fit state to be used or donated.

All of this wardrobe activity takes place on a background of the knowledge that my clothes needs will evolve with my upcoming retirement in a few months along with plenty of travelling planned.

As always, I will only be making carefully considered purchases.

I will continue to monitor and report on my progress during the year.

It is now 5 weeks since we arrived home from our trip to the UK and Ireland. Those of you who followed my travel blog will know that I travelled fairly lightly and had 6 tops earmarked to go to the charity bin at the end of the trip. In this post you can see the 3 tops (red, blue and black) and the 3 striped 3/4 sleeve tops that I had decided would need to go. They were all pretty much past their use-by-date as they had faded, had small stains and the necklines were stretched and out of shape. I wore them to death for the 6 weeks that we were away and was glad to see the back of them at the end of the trip.

I think I have enough short-sleeved and sleeveless tops in my wardrobe but the 3/4 sleeve ones will need replacing. That will be a project before next autumn. In the meantime I did buy 3 pieces on the weekend we arrived home. I did not specifically set out to buy any of them.

The Duke and I went to Maleny to pick up a few groceries and I decided to take a look in a small boutique. I found this dress which is 100% cotton, lined and cool and comfortable. The fact that it is black and white is an added bonus.

Next, we wandered across the road to a recycle boutique where I struck it lucky. This blouse is also cotton (with a touch of spandex) and I don’t think it had ever been worn. I discovered why that was probably the case when I tried it on. The top button was at the level of the bottom edge of my bra! It was an easy matter to make another buttonhole and add a button. Also, black and white!

Finally, I found a lovely stretch lace waterfall cardigan by Mela Purdie. This was also in the recycle boutique and a steal at $35 when it would have been around $250 when brand new.