Episode 210: Stop Marie Kondoing Your Closet Into Chaos

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THE FOUNDATION EDIT: http://www.theeverydayicon.co/the-foundation-edit

Your closet can look “organized” and still fail you everyday. The real issue usually isn’t the number of clothes you own, or a lack of willpower. It’s that most closet edits start in the wrong place: the hangers, not your life.

I walk through why a wardrobe audit breaks down when you don’t have context. If you’ve ever kept pieces out of guilt, donated things you later needed, or tried to build a capsule wardrobe and still felt stuck, this will make the pattern painfully clear. I share the three-part life assessment I want you to do before you touch a single item: where you actually spend your time, how your role and responsibilities have shifted, and the gap between how you need to be perceived and how you’re currently showing up. That perception gap is where personal style becomes real again, not just an “aesthetic.”

Next, we turn the closet edit into strategy. You’ll hear the exact questions to map your current week, name what changed in the last one to two years, and identify what you want people to feel when they see you. The goal is wardrobe clarity, a personal style foundation, and a closet that supports your real life so getting dressed stops draining your energy.

If you’re ready to make your edit stick, listen now, share this with a friend who feels stuck in their closet, and subscribe and leave a review.

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THE FOUNDATION EDIT: http://www.theeverydayicon.co/the-foundation-edit

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

THE SIGNATURE EDIT NEWSLETTER http://the-executive-edge.kit.com/560a58e519

WEBSITE:www.theeverydayicon.co

YOUTUBE https://www.youtube.com/@tiffanyodean

INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/styledbytiffanyo/

Transcript

Welcome Back And Reset

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Everyday Icon Style Podcast, a podcast that teaches you how to build a wardrobe that supports your personal friend and lifestyle. I'm your host Tiffany. Let's get started. Welcome everybody back to the Everyday Icon Style Podcast. I am your host as always, Tiffany, and I have been away for a while because let me tell you, my computer was pretty much like, Tiffany, I'm done. So I had to go get a new computer and a whole new setup. So now that I'm back, we can dive right back in to where we've always loved, to where I left off. So today

Why Closet Edits Stall

SPEAKER_00 0:37

I want to talk to you about why you can't edit your wardrobe until you assess your life. Now I know you've heard me talk about closet edits before, and you've seen it on social media and in blog posts about how editing out your closet is important, and it is. But I want us to take it just a little bit deeper because I believe that now when it comes to building not only just your foundation, but even just your personal and signature style, I think that we need to take it just a little bit further. We've always talked about our personal style as far as being, or nowadays it seems like it's more of an aesthetic and not who each individual person is. So now we have to get back to actually putting the personal back into personal style. So let's dive right on in. So you've probably already have tried actually to clean out your closet at least once. And if you haven't, I highly recommend that you do at least once because it will give you an overview and it forces you to actually look at yourself because your closet, in essence, is a mirror. Now, I know you've probably pulled things out. You've made a pile, asked yourself, does this work? Do I keep this? Do I throw it away? Do I give it to the goodwill? And then you probably just stood there and you're like, I'm not quite sure. So what do you end up doing? You end up putting it all right back into your closet. Or you gave things away that you actually regretted, or maybe bought new things to replace them and then ended up in the exact same situation six months later. And that is always a problem. You always end up back on a new hamster wheel. Here's what I'm going to tell you. The closet, it was actually never the problem. And today I'm going to talk to you about why the audit fails when you skip the step that has to come before it. And I am even to blame for this as well. That there is a part that we need to first um do before a part that we have to do first before we actually do this. So

What A Blind Edit Looks Like

SPEAKER_00 3:01

let me tell you what a closet edit without the prior work actually looks like. You go into there with great intentions. You've maybe watched some videos, read some articles, listened to my podcast, and you've got there, and you've got the keep, donate, and of course your maybe pals. And then you start pulling things out, and the questions start coming. Does this still fit? Do I still like this? Is this still me? And you realize you don't actually know how to answer these questions, not clearly and especially not confidently. So what do you do? You default to one of a few patterns. You keep things out of guilt because they were expensive or somebody gave them to you. You donate things you actually needed because they felt boring at that particular time. You get ruthless and then regret it. Or you keep almost everything because you can't make a decision and it's overwhelming and you become frustrated. That's not a discipline problem. It's actually a sequencing problem. And then the closet looks a little neater after you put everything in for maybe like a few weeks. But then it drifts right back into the same thing that it's always been a mess. Now the closet audit asks you to make decisions about your wardrobe. But if you haven't first gotten clear on your life, then these decisions they have actually no foundation. And you're basically trying to solve an equation with missing variables.

The Three-Part Life Assessment

SPEAKER_00 4:52

So what assessing your life actually means. And I'm not talking about a journaling exercise, and I'm not asking you to find yourself, which we're gonna kind of get away from because I believe it's already there. But what I'm talking about is something very specific and very practical, and that all of us, style coaches and even personal stylists, overlook. Before you can build a wardrobe that works, you need to understand these three things. One, where you actually spend your time, not where you used to spend your time, not where you think you should be spending it, but where are you actually going on a regular basis and what these environments require? Because here's what I'm learning. Someone builds a wardrobe around someone who builds a wardrobe around a life they had two years ago or around a life they aspire to have. And then they wonder why nothing feels right and everything feels off. You're all right, your wardrobe, my mistake, your wardrobe has to serve your actual life, not an old one and not one that's theoretical, because you don't know that the life that you're aspiring to, you don't know if you're actually going to get there. Because here's what's here's the thing. What if the life you're aspiring to is actually bigger and better than what you're actually thinking? And that aspiring to life is going to require something different, and that's where this whole aspirational thing sometimes can be a little bit misleading. Number two, how your role has shifted because titles change, responsibilities even change. The rooms you walk into change, and your wardrobe often doesn't keep up with it because you're probably somewhere four or five years ago or somewhere 10-15 years into the future. So if you've been promoted, if your visibility has increased, if you're now in rooms where you weren't before, this is going to matter because your wardrobe needs to account for where you are now, not where you were when you last paid attention to it. A lot of us do not pay attention to our wardrobes. I think we're starting to get back into paying attention to it, but as we're paying attention to it now, I want us to do it a little bit differently and not the rules that applied before I'll say the nasty word prior to COVID. Things have shifted, and so have you, and now we have to begin to think a little bit differently on how we're going to go about this. And lastly, how you need to be perceived versus how you're currently showing up. Now, this is definitely a gap that many of you don't look at honestly. And it's not because there's no self-awareness, but it's because no one's ever asked them to put two things, put these two things aside, side by side, and compare them. What does your role require people to see when they actually look at you? Is it credibility, warmth, authority, innovation? And what is your wardrobe currently delivering? Or is there a gap between the two? That's the life assessment. Just three

Minimalism Is Not A Strategy

SPEAKER_00 8:19

things where you are, what's changed, and where the actual gap is. And when you do the work first, the closet edit becomes completely different than what we're actually used to and accustomed to. You're not asking, do I still like this? You're asking, does this serve where I am going? And what is a much more answerable question? Now you are asking of where you're going, but where are you going right now? Now, when you don't do your audit without context, it's just going to be minimalism. Just trying to get rid of stuff so you have less clothes, but not what you actually need. Now, this is something I will say that I want you to hear really clear. The audit without the prior work is just minimalism. And minimalism is a trend, it's not a strategy. Does less mean something? Less mean more to some people? Yes. But this is going to be tailored to your life, not the masses, not something generic that we always hear about online and everything else. So when you go into your closet and remove things, what you're left with is just less. Less clutter, yes, but not necessarily more clarity. And that is what you actually need. And you can have a capsule wardrobe of 30 pieces and still not know what to wear in the morning if those 30 pieces don't map to your actual life. That's why there is you need to build a foundation so that you can have a cohesive wardrobe that can actually begin to start to fill in the gaps. Now, real wardrobe clarity is not about how little you have, actually. It's about how intentional each thing is. So you don't have to cut down to 30 pieces. I don't care if you have a closet full of clothes. As long as everything functions and it's built on intention, that is what is going to matter. And intentionality requires context. It requires knowing what you need the wardrobe to do before you can evaluate whether it's doing it or not, and whether what it is that you need to actually buy and purchase for your actual wardrobe. Think about it this way: if someone asks you to edit a document, you'd need to know what the document is for before you could make good decisions about what stays and actually what goes. You can't just cut things out because they seem unnecessary in isolation. You need the context to evaluate them correctly. Your wardrobe is the same way. The assessment gives you the context without it, you're editing blind, and you will end up on the same hamster wheel that we always end up on. So,

Edit Faster With Clear Criteria

SPEAKER_00 11:23

what's going to change when you do it in the actual right order? When you do the life assessment first, everything about the closet edit will change. You stop making decisions based on feelings in the moment and start making decisions based on actual criteria. Does this fit my current life? Does this serve my role? Does this close the gap between how I need to be perceived and how I'm currently showing up? Or if you've had major life changes. You want to add that in as well. Those are not emotional questions. They're strategic ones. And strategic questions get way better answers. Why? Because you also stop second-guessing yourself. One of the biggest reasons the closet edits stalls is that people don't trust their own decisions. I am guilty of this as well. They let go of something and then worry they'll need it again. They keep something and then feel guilty about keeping it. When you have a clear picture of your life, your role, and your gaps, and not what anybody else tells you, you now have a filter. And a filter gives you confidence because you don't need decide you don't want to decide based on does this spark joy, or whatever standard you've been using, or whatever you've seen on social media or in blogs. That's why what you're doing does not work. You're deciding based on does this serve what I actually need, what they or not, and not what they are telling me that I need. And here's the part that will definitely surprise you. When you do this work first, the edit often takes way less time and doesn't necessarily take all day. Because now you're clear. And the confusion comes from not knowing what you're editing toward. Once you know that, your decisions get faster. I will put this caveat in here. Maybe the first time that you've done it, especially if you haven't done it in a while, it may take a little longer, maybe a few hours. We'll say half a day. Because once that happens, things will now begin to get faster as you do it. And I highly recommend that you do this at least once a year. If you live where you actually get real seasons, twice a year. And you walk in, and because of all this, you'll walk in knowing what you actually need. And everything in the closet either meets that or it won't. And we want to know what we need. So where does this actually start?

Three Questions To Ask First

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Before you open a closet door and before you touch your closet, sit down with three questions. Question number one: What does my week actually look like today? Right now. Map it out. How many days are you in a formal or semi-formal event? How many are remote or hybrid? Are you traveling? Are you presenting? Are you client-facing? What is the actual texture of your life on a regular basis? Question number two. What has changed in the last one to two years? New title, new company, new visibility, new industry? Are you becoming an entrepreneur? Has a major life thing happened? For me, I have an issue with my knee. That's a major life event. Your wardrobe should reflect where you are now, not where you were or who you were. And last question: When I walk into a room at my level, what do I need people to feel when they see me? Not think, feel. Because that's what presence is. And your wardrobe is one of the most powerful secret weapons, tools that you have for creating it. Think of your closet as your silent partner, and that is what we are building towards. I want you to write those down, sit with them, and then and only then go to the closet, and you'll find the edit is clearer, faster, and actually sticks for the long haul. Of course, you'll make a few tweaks, but it will actually last. So here's the thing about sequence and why it matters. Now, it seems like it takes more time up front, and it does, just a little bit. But the cost of skipping it is that you do the work over and over and over again and never actually get where you're trying to actually go. And you're on this never-ending hamster wheel when it comes to your closet. Now, with a life assessment, is what's going to make your wardrobe work sustainable. It's what makes the edit actually stick. It's what transforms your closet from a source of stress every day to something that genuinely supports how you need to show up and you will enjoy getting dressed again. That's not a small thing. That is your time, your energy, your confidence, your presence each and every day. You are losing energy by making these huge decisions, such as what to wear, drain you of energy before you actually have to make real life decisions throughout the day. So do the work in the right order. And this will actually make everything a whole lot easier.

Foundation Edit Call And Closing

SPEAKER_00 17:13

So now, if you're sitting with this and thinking, I know I need to do this, but I don't know where to start or what my answers to these three questions even are. That is exactly what the foundation edit call is for. Now, this is where we do that assessment together. We look at your life, your role, your environment, and your current wardrobe, and we get the clear on what needs to change and what needs to actually stay. It's a working session, it's practical, and it's the right place to start if you're serious about building a wardrobe that actually works for the life you're living right now. Consider this as it actually is building the foundation. Because once you're able to edit your closet and actually get your foundation right, building your style on top of that is going to be a little bit easier and a whole lot stressful. Now, the link is in the bio of this is in the description of this episode below. And I would love to work with you. This is a four-hour VIP day where we get series and it is about you and what it is that you want and what it is that you need and how your wardrobe is going to work. We are going to do this first because once we're done with that, then we'll move on to either doing a full credit closet edit or moving on to the next stage, which is actually building out your actual wardrobe. So when you're thinking about the closet edit, I want you to begin to think about it differently. Because when you begin to think about it differently, you will now show up and dress and build a closet that actually supports you. So, with all of that being said, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Stay healthy, stay safe, and I will talk to you guys in the next episode.