October 16, 2018 · 22 Comments

My Fall One Rack Wardrobe

What is a fall one rack wardrobe? It’s exactly what it sounds like….one rack of clothing that I stick to for a season.

After trying the capsule wardrobe experiment, I realized that I liked certain aspects and disliked others. My likes were:

all the pieces went with most of the other items
getting dressed was fast
it made me mindful when shopping
I liked all the items

There were also dislikes about capsule wardrobing….

feeling guilty when I grabbed things I already owned that weren’t in my original capsule
angry if something didn’t work with other pieces
frustrated at the limited choices at times
the frequency of laundry

I obviously know that it was my decision and nobody was forcing me to NOT work something else into the capsule….but since I thought of it as an experiment I didn’t want to break the “capsule rules”. The emotional frustration kinda birthed the idea that I don’t need a single stack of clothing. I wanted a whole rack. I needed more choices. And I wanted to take all the good parts of capsule wardrobing and make them work for me. And thus the one rack wardrobe was born. Is it very different than a capsule? Nope. But for me, it was the idea of putting all the items together in one area (location is EVERYTHING) helped me with time savings and effort of dressing in the morning. And the idea that I could add things was freeing. And if it only worked with one item? Who the heck cares as long as I LOVE IT. (and it had to fit on the rack!)

HOW DID IT WORK?

So here is what I did….I picked out items I loved and allowed myself to put things together on one rack that I removed from my closet. It sat outside in my room, which admittedly wasn’t the prettiest thing ever but I wanted to remove the one-rack so that the items that made the cut had to be walked out and around and hung up. That little bit of extra effort made the difference! Even to be considered ‘rack-worthy’ I had to love it….but loving it wasn’t always enough….I also had to WEAR it. I had to carefully consider if the item earned its spot on the rack and once they made the rack, it was very evident of what was worn and what wasn’t. The items I grabbed over and over, those were items that lived there. The other items (whether they were not appropriate for the weather or whatever) went back into my closet. The items that were in my closet that were weather appropriate went under strict scrutiny and I donated about 3/4 of them!

DID YOU WEAR THE ITEMS?

The items on the rack are the things I wore for the last several months and it still had all the pros of the capsule. When I bought something new, it went straight onto the rack. Long story short….I cleaned out the majority of my closet (to be honest a TON was maternity or post-maternity) and I figured out the items I love. Also I think that this was less about thinking what went together and more about the overall wardrobe and my personal style.

WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

I realized through this process that I love cotton and t-shirts and comfort and my cheap jeans. I love items that have texture and details and flattering necklines. I would rather buy a nice top that I wear all the time than spend money on high end pants. I came to a conclusion that my personal style falls into a broad category of “preppy all american comfortable boho”. Anyhoo…let’s get right to it and share some of these clothing items!

MY FALL ONE RACK WARDROBE

OUTFIT IDEAS

Now that you know what I bought, here are a few ideas of how I put things together and where I wear these outfits. You can shop any of these photos by clicking on the small photos below the pictures and they will give you direct links. If you would like more outfit ideas, just let me know in the comments and I will do another post this week with more!