Fall is a beautiful season, but bittersweet because it means that our long, cold winter is just around the corner. At this time of year, I’m always reluctant to put my summer clothes away because I keep hoping that there will be a few more truly warm days and that I’ll still need them. Realistically, however, the days are getting shorter and cooler and I’m wearing mostly transitional pieces. While I haven’t switched my closet from spring/summer to fall/winter yet, I have started making some small moves in that direction. A few summer clothes that weren’t used at all this year have already been dropped off at the thrift store and this week, in preparation for fall, I decided to take a serious look at my scarf collection.
I have a few warm, wooly scarves for outdoor wear in the depths of winter, but for this exercise, I was addressing only what I’d call my fashion scarves. I started by gathering them all together in one place. There were infinity scarves, rectangular scarves, square scarves, and even a few very tiny scarves. There were animal prints, polka dots, stripes, and a variety of other patterns. As you can see, there were lots of earth tones, some blues, greens, and greys, and a few pops of other colours. For a woman who doesn’t wear scarves very often, I seem to have a lot of them! A couple were gifts and a couple belonged to my mother-in-law before she passed away, but I picked up the vast majority of them at the local thrift stores over the past few years. Some I’ve never actually worn! It was time to decide which ones to keep and which ones to move along. A scarf doesn’t take up much space, but getting dressed is so much easier when your wardrobe is pared down to only those items that will actually be worn.
I decided to start by separating my scarf collection into three piles… ones I’ve worn regularly in the past, ones I don’t wear and probably never will, and ones I’d like to wear but haven’t figured out how yet. This method can actually work well for everything in your closet, but for now I was focusing only on scarves. The don’t wear pile was set aside for my next trip to the thrift store. Hopefully someone else will enjoy those ones. Next, I went through the favourites pile and took a closer look at each of them. One of them was badly worn with lots of little catches in the fabric. It was time to let that one go too. The rest of that group went into my closet on handy scarf hangers purchased at the dollar store.
Over the next while as I do the rest of my seasonal closet switch, I’ll play around with the final few; the scarves that I like but haven’t quite figured out how to wear with my existing wardrobe. Hopefully they’ll result in some new looks for fall.
And finally, here’s my newest scarf. Infinity scarves are so easy to wear and when I saw this one in the thrift store last week, I knew immediately that it would look great with a jean jacket, in this case a basic one from Gap that’s been in my closet for several years. Perfect for an early fall day!
Every spring and fall when I do my seasonal closet switch, there are decisions to be made about what to put away for the following year and what to get rid of. At the beginning of each season, I turn all the hangers in my closet around. If the hanger is still turned at the end of the season, I know that that item was never worn and that I should think about shipping it off to the second-hand store. This year is a little different though. We had such a non-summer here in Alberta that there are more unturned hangers than usual. There simply weren’t enough truly warm days to wear all my summer clothes!
I’ve written before about 
If you’re like me, you probably find it easy to reach into your closet and pull out the same combinations over and over again, but once in awhile I like to put things together in new and different ways. That’s what I’ve done today.
I live on the Canadian prairie where we have very distinct seasons. As a result, I have two distinct wardrobes, summer and winter. Sadly, it will soon be time to pack away my shorts, capris, and all my other warm weather gear and prepare for the cold months ahead, but tucked in between summer and winter are the shoulder seasons, spring and fall. Times of transition. What do you wear when it’s 5ºC (41ºF) first thing in the morning and 30ºC (86ºF) that same afternoon? That’s the kind of weather we’ve been having this week and that’s why there are some pieces that stay in my closet year round.
Spring is coming to the Canadian prairie. The geese are back, the gophers have come out of hibernation and there are tiny sprouts appearing in my flower beds. Soon it will be time to put away our winter wardrobes and bring out spring and summer clothing. This is also a good time to take a look at what to keep for another season and what to dispose of, but how do we decide?
Following Augustine 