It's time to clean up your closet

If your house is in a total mess and your guests have to literally hop-step and jump to find their way, then you need to declutter to bring out a vibrant, better you,, writes NJOKI CHEGE

Are you a compulsive buyer of clothes and one fond of hoarding? Is your house is a maze of floor-to-ceiling clutter, where your guests have to literally hop-step and jump, to find their way?

Then chances are that your closet is like that too, and in need of intervention.

What many people don’t realise is that cleaning out or ‘detoxifying’ your wardrobe is more of a psychological than a physical activity.

Clutter is an indication of something bigger going on inside of us, and detoxifying your wardrobe can bring out a vibrant, better you.

Energy in clothes

It goes beyond selecting all those clothes you’ve never worn since the last year of college. It is about ‘why’ you need to clean out your closet and how detoxifying your wardrobe can rid you of ghosts of the past. Clothes have energy. They hold memories of the times we wore them. They conjure the same feelings we felt during a certain period in our lives. And we wistfully remember the days we were thinner and fitter… the days we went on dinner dates more… the days before the babies came and everything went south…the days we had a thriving sex life…the days we had a glamorous and well-paying job. Clothes capture these moments that we get attached to them.

And just like food can become a comfort thing, shopaholics are often buying clothes to cover up some deep-seated emotional nakedness.

Nasty experience

Clothes play a significant role in how your day turns out. Studies have shown that wearing colourful clothes can make you more creative, happier and less depressed. Often when depression or illness is with us, we have an inclination for black and sombre colours.

One of the major reasons why you need to detoxify your wardrobe is because you don’t need most of it anyway.

Letting go of some clothes, could just be your ticket to getting over that break-up, depression, divorce or nasty experience . Detoxifying your wardrobe gets rid of the clutter in your closet, which is an indication of something bigger going on inside of us.

Welcome to the world of ‘compulsive hoarding’ or disposophobia. This is the excessive acquisition of possessions (and failure to use or discard them), even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary.

Most of our wardrobes are like so — too many stockings, T-shirts (most of them branded), heels, purses, dresses and other items, you’ve never worn in a year.

A person who engages in compulsive hoarding is commonly said to be a ‘pack rat’, in reference to that animal’s characteristic hoarding. The motivation behind hoarding varies among hoarders. Some people who hoard receive pleasure from collecting items they want.

For example, some people like to shop and will buy so many clothes they forget what they have. Even when their closets fill and their purchases begin to overtake their houses, they may not think they have a problem.

Dr Agnes Zani, a sociology lecturer at the University of Nairobi says though getting attached to things we have bought or been given is normal, extreme hoarding of unnecessary clothes and things in general points to more serious levels of clutter in the hoarder’s life — cluttered relationships, emotions and minds.

Unhealthy attachment

Says she: "Hoarders develop an unhealthy attachment to things consciously or unconsciously. Such people are not adaptable in life — they are slow in accepting change and so cling to situations, things, moments and people."

Talking of people who have rooms in their homes dedicated to just storing old and disused clothes, Dr Zani says: "Detoxifying can have a psychological effect on such people.

For example, if it is a treasured item given by a dead mother or close relative that one uses to remember that person, getting rid of it is like detaching in an emotional sense from that person because that item acts as the emotional link, and keeps the memory of that dead person or departed lover psychologically alive."

Imelda Marcos, the former beauty queen and wife of former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos is notorious for having had 2,700 pairs of shoes.

A compulsive shopper, Imelda was famous for her lavish spending on herself, particularly for shoes.

But Imelda was born in 1929, when shoes and shoe closets were unheard of. Even when her husband proposed to her (half an hour after meeting her for the first time) she had no shoes, just slippers.

"You see, the most important time in my life, there was no shoe!" she says in an interview.