REGARDLESS OF THE size of your closet, the day eventually comes when you must clean it out. Usually, this day makes its presence known when you reach in for a pair of pants and can’t get them out because they are stuck. Extracting them is like pulling a single page out of a book that has a 250-pound man standing on it. On this day you realize that it is time for a purge.

Closet purges are difficult for me. I hate to shop. It takes a great deal of emotional energy, not to mention money, to fill my closet. I have formed a close, some might say unnatural, bond with each and every item in it. So when the day of purging arrived one recent afternoon, I felt like a mother forced to decide which of her children to save. The obdurate laws of physics took no mercy on my plight, and refused to bend the rule about two objects occupying the same space. Cursing all the while, I commenced pre-purge planning.

Most people throw away worn-out clothes, clothes that do not fit, or clothes that are so far out of style they’re almost back “in” again. I use none of these criteria: an emotional-triage strategy is the only way I can emerge from the ordeal psychologically whole, if a little bruised. Using this system, I categorized my clothing into three basic groups — clothes I love, expensive clothes, and the Untouchables.

THE CLOTHES I love can be further broken down into the following subsets: clothes I love but had forgotten I owned; clothes I loved when I bought them, even though they never looked that good on me; and skinny clothes, some of which date as far back as two sizes ago. The last category is especially difficult, because getting rid of these clothes is a tacit acknowledgement that I will never, ever be that size again. Is it possible to achieve such a state of enlightened awareness, grace, and Zen-like acceptance of one’s physical self? No, it is not. So the skinny clothes stayed.

The remaining clothes I love were purged based on how long it had been since I’d last worn them. Anything that hadn’t been on my body for more than a year was out, no questions asked. More difficult were the rare pieces I’d forgotten I owned that I thought looked great, but by now were of questionable fashion worth. Also problematic were pieces that were so expensive they constituted a significant percentage of my net worth. In these situations, the only thing to do was to call in my “clothing executioner”: my roommate, a fashion designer with impeccable taste and no mercy. A thumbs-up from her, it stayed; down, it was history.

Finally, warily, I approached, the Untouchables. The most common reason an item makes it into the Untouchable class is that I inherited it from someone I love who is no longer alive to see me wear it. This also means they are no longer alive to see me give it to Goodwill. These items come with a five-year moratorium on disposal that begins on the day I inherit them. Once the time limit is passed, if the piece is truly horrible, like an utterly indigestible dark-green wool Jantzen sweater I got when my grandfather died, I say a silent prayer of thanks, ask for the person’s forgiveness, and place it lovingly in the garbage bag. (I can’t imagine he would want his granddaughter walking around in that thing anyway.) Until then, I don’t even touch it.

The other reason a piece makes it into the Untouchable category is its historical value. For instance, I know that I will never part with my Road Warrior T-shirt, a gift from a college friend in homage to my obsession with Mel Gibson shortly after his cutting-edge noir action film. Both its sleeves are cut off, and it’s almost see-through from age, but it retains an exalted place in my T-shirt drawer. So, too, does my Tubes concert T-shirt from their early ’80s “Inside/Outside” tour. I cherish my Dire Straits concert T from their outstanding 1986 Melbourne, Australia, gig. I will never part with my Jackson Hole T-shirt with just did it emblazoned across the front. And let us not forget the universally indispensable component of any Untouchable collection: a Bruce Springsteen tee. Of all the things we leave behind when we finally pass into the Great Closet in the Sky, there is no finer legacy than a collection of wicked pissah antique concert T-shirts. I believe that one day, when my grandchildren are sorting through the clothing I leave behind, it will be this pile over which there will be much screaming, yelling, and jealous, unbecoming behavior.

The last phase of purging is perhaps the most difficult. In Stage 1 (Holding Period), the bags of clothing sit on your kitchen floor for two weeks, waiting for you to bring them to the trunk of your car. It also serves as a final opportunity to change your mind about any item, which usually happens to me when I am racked with guilt for disposing of an Untouchable, or I realize that one piece would go perfectly with the outfit I want to wear the next day. Finally, in a fit of organization, you lug the bags down to your car, where they move into Stage 2 (Transportation). There they sit for up to a year while you drive around oblivious to them, except when you must use the trunk, which their presence prohibits.

Eventually, the clothes enter the Stage 3 (Disposal). There is a small ceremony that I conduct when I finally heave those bags into the Goodwill dumpster. It is too personal to describe in detail here, but it involves a processional and a short reading from Kahlil Gibran or Walt Whitman, depending upon my mood. Then I thank the clothes, acknowledge the pleasure they have brought me, and wish them godspeed into someone else’s closet — someone who will get as much pleasure out of wearing them as I would have if I fit into them, if I’d remembered that I owned them, or if they were still in style.

Kris Frieswick can be reached at krisf1@gte.net.

Issue Date: June 28- July 5, 2001