Closet purge what to get rid of how to plan your looks for the season.

I wanted to organize my clothing for the coming summer months.  I decided to use Imogene Lamport e-book "Five Step Formula for a Fabulous Wardrobe on a Budget" to try her suggested process.
The first step is to know who you are and what your wardrobe needs are. I am retired so I need mostly casual clothing. Some smart casual and a few special occasion outfits. I will not need traditional business or even relaxed business outfits for the most part during the summer. Even if I go to see a lawyer I won't need a suit... 
The next step is to organize your ideas onto an idea board. I like this part of the activity. I cut out pictures from magazines or clothing catalogues and put together my ideas on a poster board. This gives me a visual reference as to what types of outfits I want to wear. This is easier for me to do than to list a bunch of words that I think describe my look. I always can come up with the list but do they really reflect my personality. The idea is to match your personality to your clothing so that they are saying the same thing. 
My list of words were: artsy-creative, dependable, friendly, warm, polished, chic, humerous.
So what would that look like in clothing: that is right I am clueless? So see why cutting out the pictures works better for me.
 In case you are interested I used pictures from, Chico's, J.Jill, Cabi Canary (on line clothing), Pinterest some of the rugged clothing lines as well. 
The purging of the clothing gets so much easier when you have a style direction. 
Since this clothing organization is really for the next 3 months it is going to be very hot and humid here. I have no weddings to go to so I don't need any special occasions outfits either. 
I put all of my jackets and dress slacks in another closet I put all of my long sleeved knit tops folded up and away. I put all of my button down long sleeve shirts temporarily away too. I folded up all of my sweaters after I washed all of them. If I decide I need any of these as a cover for insides air conditioned places I can always add them back.
After I took all of these pieces out I was left with knit tops, short sleeved, sleeveless and cami tops, summer skirts, summer dresses, and numerous cotton pants and shorts. I have one summer weight sleeveless vest. 
I like Imogene's suggestion to first sort your clothing into neutrals and like colors. For me it makes it easier to see what I have that might be put into a clothing capsule (organized group that relates by a color theme).
Once I did all of this I decided that I wanted to visually catalog my looks. My newest step was to use a app. I used Dress box an app I found on my  windows telephone.The software allows you to take pictures of your clothing and to organize them into outfits via the software. I just jumped to taking photos of outfits that I made based upon the pictures I cut out on my inspiration board.

pinterest picture

pinterest picture

cabi canary 2012

My board ended up having skirt looks, rolled up jeans short looks, cargo short looks, boyfriend jeans looks, and colored ankle pants looks and one dress look.
When I color sorted my clothing I came up with three distinct groups. One a neutral group, the other a orange coral group and the last a turquoise/teal group. I now have 3 capsules based upon these colors. Funny how they all neatly fit into these groups. So here are some pictures of my collage inspiration pictures and my first outfit look. 

 
This is a dressy blouse with very casual pants and just some keds in the same tone and the pants. I had not worn this blouse in a while but in this combination I think it works. 
And today I am going visible on  Not Dead Yet Style.