Not such a great idea

So it seems to be that time of year, post-sales, pre-spring where fashion bloggers a-plenty are considering their last year or so of purchases, having wardrobe revamps and generally trying to work out how they stand vis-a-vie their clothes.

I've been reading all these blogs, blissful in my own certainty that a) My wardrobe has no trouble fitting all my stuff in, and b) I've hardly spent anything on clothes recently. In fact I was so sure of it I thought I'd try a little experiment. It's been about six months since I came back from China so I reckoned I could gather together all the clothes I've acquired since then easy-as and bask in my own wonderfulness of how controlled my buying has been.

So this came as a bit of a shock....



Even this..



Didn't really help.

Now this isn't even the first time this has happened to me. So luckily I've come up with a few formulas for dealing with this.

Firstly this helped a little:



To the right: clothes and shoes I have bought, to the left: clothes and shoes that have been given to me/found/otherwise procured. I'd say that brings the total down quite nicely.

Out of a total of 33 items, 11 or 1/3 or even 33% I didn't spent money on - get in.

Next, 'quality vs. quantity' It's generally agreed that things that are made out of real silk/leather/wool will last you. So a quick rummage tells me that out of a possible 33 items, 16 are polyester/viscose etc. (the left) and 17 are nice stuff (the right).



I honestly thought that would go more in my favour, I never buy anything I consider to look cheap. I think we can thank Kate Kanzier and my penchant for pale coloured silks for swinging that one into the safe zone.

So, quality is at 51.5%

Encouragingly only 5 of the 17 'real' items, so 29.4%, are ones that were bought for me. So I buy nicer stuff for me than other people do - interesting.

Price of course is the biggie here, my bizarrely accurate memory comes in useful here. The average cost of each item was a gorgeous

£16

The beige ASOS wedges came in top at an eye watering £50, while a New Look not-velvet playsuit bought in the sale was a glorious £3. Whilst I feel it would be uncharitable to give precise numbers a quick adding up of the 'otherwise acquired' pile reveals a far more generous figure - wehay!

So overall I don't feel too bad about that, although definitely not as smug as I thought I might.
Welcome to the inside of my head.

xx