5 things to ditch to improve your wardrobe in 2024

Get rid of these things immediately!

1. Ditch the expectation

to live up to whatever style your neighbour/mother/sister/best friend wants you to have.

One of the most useful things to ditch is other peoples expectations. Isn’t it about time?

I live in a small town. Not many people dress outside the norm. I know a sweet elderly lady who wears patent leather loafers with rhinestones and silk scarves and a leopard print faux fur coat, she would look quite at home sauntering down Manhattan next to Central Park. I love her style. I also met an equally sweet young man the other day at the grocery store who sported a bright yellow knitted hat and a knitted Sophie Scarf of milk chocolate brown and I have known him for a very long time and know that it has cost him a lot to not live up to the normative expectations of the community. He turned out all right and I really enjoy meeting him, and not only because he is a fellow knitter.

For the love of nail polish, let’s agree to ditch other people’s expectations that seem to creep into our minds and then we start pretending it’s our own voice.

Let’s agree to create our own expectations and support each other in expressing our own styles.

2. Ditch the need

to have many different types of clothes.

You don’t need many types of clothes. You have your preferred style uniform, even if you don’t call it your style uniform.

Ditch the cute little shirts with collars and lambswool sweaters if you keep it just because you like to pretend that you’ll adapt a preppy style one of these years.

Ditch the long sweeping skirts if you never wear it because you bike to work.

Ditch the seven different high-waisted slacks that you think would make you look like Tilda Swinton if you reach for those comfy yoga pants almost every day.

You only need the types of clothes that fit your preferred style formula. Ditch the rest.

3. Ditch the fantasy

of being able to use the party frock with sequins that scratch and the cocktail dress with the skirt that hikes up in the back when you take three steps.

Ditch the fantasy. Only people with professional careers that take them to gala dinners or Grammy award shows need lots of party frocks.

4. Ditch the fear

of wearing the same clothes every day.

Let go of the fear that people will judge you if you show up in the same clothes over and over. The truth is nobody will even notice.

They will notice your attitude.

They will notice your style.

They will notice the way you listen to them and the way you treat them.

Very few people will think twice about the fact that you are wearing the same clothes twice in a row.

5. Ditch the guilt

that you don’t fit into certain clothes anymore.

You’re not the same that you were a decade - seven years - one year ago. Thank goodness.

Imagine life if we stayed the same? Your body matures and your mind matures. The assumptions you used to make, they don’t fit anymore.

Play lists from long ago don’t fit anymore. You no longer assume that playing “I’m Too Sexy For This Shirt” will breathe life into any party.

And clothes don’t fit anymore. You no longer fit into that shirt anyways.

So ditch the guilt.

And if you can’t bear to let go of those clothes that don’t fit, just stick them in a box labeled “I’m Too Sexy For This Shirt” and forget about them for a while. It won’t hurt so much to donate them after they has gathered dust in the top shelf of the garage for two years.

This post is entirely free. You’re welcome to upgrade your subscription to paid and get alllll the emails, including snarky Norwegianisms and Scandi style tips with shopping links: