Summer 2020 Himekaji Wardrobe Inspiration

It feels like I only ever blog in the summer for some reason But here we are, back in my least favorite time of the year. We're in the middle of a huge heatwave with no end in sight right now, so it's kind of hard to find the motivation to dress up cute. When it's this hot out I definitely want to prioritize comfort over everything else so I think my ideal summer style can be a little bit toned down compared to other seasons. I'm also probably not going to be buying a whole lot for my wardrobe this season; I've learned my lesson from past years trying to build up a new wardrobe without planning well in advance! But that won't stop me from daydreaming anyway.

Wardrobe Building Part 4: Half a Decade Later...

The last installation of my wardrobe building series was about 5 years ago! It feels like things have changed a lot since then, but also like they haven't changed at all

I never really got a satisfying conclusion to this blog series because looking back on it, building up a wardrobe is a long and slow process, and I'm still filling in the gaps! I think over the years I went through some pretty pivotal life transitions and my resolve to solidifying a capsule wardrobe fell off track. I never lost interest in the fashion and I did keep buying pieces a little bit at a time, and I think now with a more solidified sense of style, much better self confidence overall, as well as a little more expendable income at my disposal, I think I'm finally ready to dive back in and give this series another attempt!

So, let's go back to square 1 and find out what we're working with. Here's a catalog of my entire himekaji wardrobe as it stands currently.

Konmari Part 3: Clothing

Clothing was the first category I tackled and also the category with the most instantaneous reward! It was the only category I bothered to keep track of the numbers. Excluding socks and underwear which I couldn't really be bothered to count, and not including bags or shoes which were their own subcategory, before the konmari process I counted 224 items in my wardrobe, which I pared down to 128 simply by discarding pieces that I didn't look forward to wearing again, either because it fit me wrong or just wasn't a style that I feel suits me. Honestly I was being pretty forgiving in what items I decided to keep, and I definitely would like to do a more stringent pass following the advice from The Curated Closet, but for now I think the results are already a huge step in the right direction.

୨୧ Himekaji Girls Discord Server! ୨୧

 Today's entry is only a quick update! I wanted to pop in and let you know about the himekaji discord server I spun up recently!

It's still a very small community at the moment, but the server includes the following features:

♡ self assignable color roles

♡ shop update pings for himekaji brands (currently we are only monitoring Liz Lisa, but we will include other shops as the server grows and by popular demand!)

♡ member snap channel for posting ootds or promoting your himekaji related content

♡ member sales channel for promoting your shops

♡ general discussion with other himekaji fans!

The server is open to anyone who enjoys wearing and collecting himekaji style, so whether you're a beginner to the style or you've been wearing it for years, we would be delighted for you to join us ♡

Until next time!

Konmari Part 2: Sorting by Category

Marie Condo suggests dressing up slightly for the tidying process. I didn't really keep this up since dust allergies quickly made me too miserable to care about any of that, but at least I got dressed up once on the first day of the process!

The central portion of tidying with Marie Condo involves holding every item in your possession and asking yourself whether it sparks joy. A unique part of this process that I hadn't considered before is sorting items by category rather than by location. I think for me this was a huge change from how I normally tidy and although it was a struggle I think the results so far have been totally worth it! Normally when you tidy you'd tackle it room by room. But Marie Condo points out that by doing this you might end up with several different places where the same things are stored. This leaves you open to accidentally having an excess of the same item, or you might have to look around in multiple spots to finally find the exact item you're looking for. By tidying by category, not only do you get a bird's eye view into all the items you own, but it also makes it easier to put things back in a place where they really belong. 

Before beginning this process I was really guilty of this. I had electronics scattered in every room of my house; my sewing items and cleaning items were taking up space in my kitchen and old notebooks took up prime real estate on my shelves just because I didn't know where else to put them! So tidying by category is something I was really eager to try.

After skimming the sections outlined in the book, I took some time to walk around my apartment and tried to fit everything I owned into the categories. After adding a few categories of my own for items that didn't cleanly fit into any other categories (mostly related to speciality hobbies) these are the categories that I settled on:

Konmari Part 1: Planning

It's the middle of 2020 and I've been stuck in my apartment for months, so naturally it's been forcing me to confront my living space more than usual 

Actually I feel pretty okay about my apartment, which is new for me. Growing up I was an extremely messy and disorganized kid and my room routinely piled up with clutter. When I was living at home I'd always let my room pile up to an extreme point, and then spend an all day or all weekend effort putting things away until my room seemed sparkly clean! ...which would only last for a couple of days at most. Moving away for college I became gradually more organized, and I found a blog called Unfuck Your Habitat. The basic idea being, if you clean only in small bursts then eventually your brain will learn that cleaning isn't scary. Once cleaning up a little bit every day becomes part of your routine, you'll rarely get to a point where marathon cleaning is necessary. This technique has served me well, and it transformed the way I thought about cleaning or even approaching big scary tasks in general. Over time through practicing 20/10s, I was able to get into the habit of putting things away or tidying as soon as I see clutter forming. Between that and having purged my items casually while moving a couple of times, I have landed in a cute apartment surrounded by mostly cute objects that I love. Almost everything I own has a home, a spot where it lives in my house, and most things are reasonably organized.