Are you ready? This challenge should only take you five minutes!
This month I am focusing on Simplifying my Closet. This week’s Five Minute Challenge is to tackle your underwear drawer! When was the last time you cleaned it out? How many ill-fitting pairs of underwear, ratty old bras and single socks are floating around in there? Get rid of them! Just like what we are doing in our closets, this challenge should make mornings a lot easier, and leave you with good fitting, flattering undergarments.
Here’s what you should do:
1. Set a timer for five minutes.
2. Open your drawer and dump out all of the contents onto your bed or flat surface.
3. Now, pick only the best, most comfortable, most flattering things to go back in it. You may keep twelve pairs of underwear, six bras and twelve pairs of matching socks. That’s it!
4. Throw away any undergarments left on your bed. You don’t need them any more!
Don’t spend a lot of time on this. If your undergarments are split into separate drawers, pick the worst one or two drawers and do them together. If you do laundry once a week, you don’t need more than a dozen pairs of socks or underwear. Don’t worry about if you’ve got “enough.” Just toss the extras! You won’t miss all that clutter in the mornings.
I’m specifically picking quick five minute challenges so that we can all declutter and simplify without being overwhelmed. The chaos monster wants us to believe that if we can’t get things done perfectly, if we don’t spend hours cleaning and sorting and sweating, then it isn’t worth doing because it won’t be done right. That’s such a lie! One I’ve fallen for time and time again. So let’s break these down into five minutes segments. We can do anything for five minutes, right? I think you’ll be amazed at how much you’ll get done in only five minutes!
Make sure to come back here and tell me how it went! Ready? Set? Go!
Here’s my results: in five minutes I cleaned out everything but my socks. Didn’t get to that. But I threw out 18 pairs of underwear. 18 pairs! Holy cow. It is amazing how much space is in that drawer now!
Keep 12 pairs of underwear!?!? Are you kidding me? I have probably 100+ pairs and a ton of them I have gotten free from Victoria’s Secret. I have my everyday comfortable panties, period panties, nude/black/white panties for particular outfits, sexy panties, thongs, and others. (Plus, what if you go on vacation for like 10 days? You need some extras and probably won’t have access to laundry.)
And 12 pairs of socks?!? Seriously? That’s a little ridiculous. I have short socks for warm weather, calf-height socks for slightly cold weather, knee-high socks for very cold weather, white socks for sneakers, trouser socks to wear with dress shoes, etc.
It would take me way longer than five minutes to go through my underwear and socks drawers. But they are very up-to-date and there’s nothing ratty in there! I suggest people keep AT LEAST 25-30 pairs of underwear and 15-20 pairs of socks.
I totally understand Amanda. But the goal isn’t just to get rid of ratty, poor-fitting things. It is to simplify. Cut back. Live with what you need, and let the rest go. If you do laundry once a week, then twelve pairs is more than enough. (I always carry a small sample bottle of detergent on trips to wash socks, tshirts and underwear in the sink when we travel.) Same for socks. That’s two pairs of black trouser socks, two pairs of brown trouser socks, four pairs of various white socks, one pair of hiking socks, and three pairs of fashion socks. With seven days in the week, and laundry one time a week, that’s plenty. Simplifying makes getting dressed easier, it makes laundry a lot lighter and easier, and it means we have less stuff to deal with every single day.
I can understand if you need to adjust it for your lifestyle. But most people only NEED a smaller amount.
I respect if that system works for you and others, but it just doesn’t for me. Doing laundry on vacation doesn’t sound like a vacation to me. I love having so much pretty underwear and being able to wear something different every day for a month (actually probably three months!) if I want. Plus, in the winter I wear my knee socks every day, so I need to have enough to last from one laundry day to the next, not just two days as you suggested. I remember in college when I used to do laundry about once every THREE weeks! I did that because it was such a pain to do laundry, I didn’t want to pay for it, and I had enough stuff that I could go that long. Those were the days, haha!