You know what’s funny? When I moved into this apartment three years ago, I was devastated about losing my walk-in closet. Going from a whole room for clothes to half of a tiny bedroom closet felt like another reminder of everything I’d lost in the divorce. But now? I wouldn’t go back to that overstuffed disaster even if you paid me.
The thing is, I used to spend twenty minutes every morning standing in that huge closet feeling like I had nothing to wear. Sounds ridiculous, right? Surrounded by clothes but paralyzed by choices. Most mornings I’d end up grabbing the same five outfits anyway because everything else was wrinkled, didn’t fit right, or made me feel frumpy. The rest was just expensive clutter taking up space.
When we moved here, space wasn’t optional – it was survival. Emma and Lucas shared the bigger bedroom, I got the smaller one, and suddenly my clothing situation became very real very fast. I couldn’t fit everything, which meant I had to make choices. Hard ones.
I started with the obvious stuff – clothes that didn’t fit anymore, things I’d bought on sale but never actually wore, the “someday” pieces I kept thinking I’d have occasion for. You know what I’m talking about – that fancy dress you wore once to a wedding five years ago but keep because it was expensive. Gone. The jeans that might fit again if I lost fifteen pounds. Donated. The work clothes from my old job that were too formal for the dental office. Goodbye.
But here’s what surprised me – the more I got rid of, the easier getting dressed became. With fewer options, I wasn’t overwhelmed by choice anymore. I could see everything I owned at a glance, and more importantly, everything I kept was something I actually liked wearing.
I started thinking about it differently after that. Instead of trying to have an outfit for every possible scenario, I focused on pieces that worked for multiple situations. A good pair of dark jeans works for school events, casual dinners, weekend errands. A simple black dress works for parent-teacher conferences, date nights (when those happen), and throw a cardigan over it and it’s fine for work too.
The kids thought I was going crazy at first. Emma especially – she’s ten and already very concerned with having options. “Mom, you got rid of so many clothes, what if you don’t have anything to wear?” But kids adapt faster than adults, and now she actually asks me to help her clean out her closet because she sees how much easier my mornings are.
I’m not going to lie and say I have thirty perfectly coordinated pieces that all mix and match like some magazine article. That’s not realistic when you’re working full-time and single parenting. But I do have maybe forty things total including shoes and jackets, and most of them work together pretty well.
My work clothes are simple – scrubs for the office, which honestly makes that part easy. For everything else, I stick to colors that don’t make me look washed out and styles that don’t require special undergarments or dry cleaning. Because who has time for that?
The biggest game-changer was buying better quality basics instead of lots of trendy pieces. I used to shop at Target and buy five cheap shirts instead of one good one. They’d shrink or fade or lose their shape after a few washes, so I’d need to replace them constantly. Now I buy fewer things but spend more on each piece, and they last so much longer that it’s actually cheaper in the long run.
I have three pairs of jeans that fit well – one dark, one medium wash, one black. Four sweaters in colors I love. A handful of t-shirts and blouses that mix and match. Two dresses that work for different occasions. A couple cardigans, a good jacket, comfortable shoes for work, nice shoes for everything else, boots for Colorado winters. That’s basically it.
The maintenance part is huge too, and nobody talks about this. When you have fewer clothes, you can actually take care of them properly. I’m not doing laundry constantly because I ran out of clean clothes – I wash things when they need it, not out of desperation. I hang things up right away because there’s actually room in my closet. Small tears get fixed instead of ignored until the item becomes unwearable.
My ex-mother-in-law still makes comments about how I “don’t have enough clothes” when she picks up the kids. But I’m spending way less money on clothing than I used to, I’m never stressed about what to wear, and I actually like everything in my closet. So her opinion doesn’t really matter to me anymore.
The environmental aspect wasn’t my original motivation – I was just trying to survive in a small space – but now it matters to me. Fast fashion is terrible for the planet, and I was definitely part of that problem before. Buying clothes, wearing them a few times, getting tired of them, donating them, buying more. It’s such a wasteful cycle.
Now I think hard before buying anything new. Will I wear this regularly? Does it go with things I already own? Is it well-made enough to last? Do I have something similar already? Usually the answer to at least one of those questions is no, so I don’t buy it.
The kids still accumulate clothes from grandparents and birthday gifts, but I’ve gotten better at managing that too. We do closet clean-outs every season, donating things that don’t fit or don’t get worn. They’re learning to be more selective about what they keep, which I hope will serve them better than my old shopping habits.
I’m not saying everyone needs to downsize their wardrobe as drastically as I did. But there’s something to be said for owning less and enjoying it more. My small closet holds exactly what I need, everything fits properly and makes me feel good, and getting dressed isn’t a daily source of stress anymore.
Three years later, I can honestly say this tiny closet works better for my life than that giant walk-in ever did. Sometimes less really is more – you just have to be forced into discovering it to believe it.
Theresa’s a single mom in Denver who turned chaos into calm through minimalism. She writes candidly about raising kids with less stuff and more sanity—proof that simple living isn’t just possible, it’s necessary