One of the most notable aspects of putting clothes back in your wardrobe that give you joy is that it ignites an enthusiasm to experiment with creating new outfits, particularly from those pre-loved but forgotten pieces. It also dramatically changed the way I perceived this small room. No longer was it overcrowded and dull, but rather it kept enticing me to enter and enjoy all the lovely fabrics and outfit possibilities.

As part of the decluttering process, I photographed each piece on a large white sheet (or contrasting colour if the item was light in colour) and saved it for loading onto my Stylebook app later on. I can tell you that the process of photographing each piece also dramatically helps you to decide if you want to keep it or not. I ended up photographing over 200 pieces of clothing despite bagging up four large garbage bags of clothes for charity and two bags of old and worn-out items. This number doesn’t even include all my accessories (belts, scarves, hats), workout gear, loungewear or personal items. So it gives you an idea of the magnitude I had accumulated over the past decade or so but had kept hold of for sentimental reasons or because I hadn’t taken the time to really assess what I had.

I must admit that I was a little disappointed that I still had this many clothes left over, but figured I had already culled so many that it was a pretty good start for a hoarder of clothes. I carefully folded clothing such as jumpers, scarves, socks and underwear using Marie Kondo’s Japanese techniques of vertical alignment and was pleased that this not only saved space in my drawers, but also meant I could see every item in my closet.

I am lucky enough to have a large wardrobe, so instead of bagging up out-of-season clothes, I decided to divide each part of my ‘capsule’ wardrobe space into:

• Summer
• Winter / long items
• Shoulder season

My ‘shoulder season’ includes those clothes that you may need if there’s a cold snap in the summer, or would wear during the shoulder seasons of autumn and spring. I have found this to be very useful so far! I finished off by hanging up some lovely typographic inspirational hangings and artwork.

Here is the outcome …