30x30 Intro, Winter 2011

When I signed up for the 30x30 challenge, I did so sort of reluctantly. It seemed like a lot of work. And I'm lazy. And I won't lie. So far, I've put about 4 hours of good solid work into it. Pulling clothes, choosing how to mix and match them, hanging them up, photographing them, working on my spreadsheet working on this post keeping it real and thanking my tremendously awesometacular husband for basically just being alive. He's just so freakin' rad and also my reason for drawing breath every day. Srsly you guys. He rules. The most. (He may or may not have written some of that while I was putting some blankets in the dryer. But in all seriousness, Nathan participated in 100% of my prep work. It was really fun to be able to work on that with a friend, so if you have a friend you think might enjoy helping you, I encourage you to ask them for help.)

I started the process by purchasing Kendi's guide and reading it cover to cover. If you feel anxious at all about taking the challenge next go round, start there. It gave me the confidence to get started, and it was only 4 bucks.

After that, we pulled out a spare clothing rack we had stowed away. I went into the closet and started pulling things. I pulled things I know worked together and then pulled things that fell into similar color categories. My mix was pretty pattern heavy, which surprised me, but made me that much more interested in wearing those clothes for 30 days.



After I had pulled about 27 items I stopped. I wanted to be able to fill in any holes I found with those last three items. (Like the blazer I later found out I will need for the next EBEW!) Nathan booted up the computer and I called out item descriptions and he logged them in the spreadsheet. We had categories for each clothing type. They were numbered in the order they were in at the time and we did not worry about renumbering.


(if you need to see that bigger, click on the image to go to my flickr page, where you can see it in larger sizes)

Once everything had a number, I started calling out combinations I would wear. Not that I WILL wear mind you, just possibilities. We stopped at 37 combinations. That leaves room for a couple that just don't look right once I get them on, AND once I added my last 3 items, I have even more possibilities. Charting out that many possibilities made me feel much more confident about the challenge. The last column on the spreadsheet was left blank. That is where I will log outfits as I actually wear them so as not to repeat any.

And with all that background stuff out of the way, I give you my items



Individual items, by number, not category (for info regarding how may items I selected per category, please see the spreadsheet...)

As before, if you'd like to see any of these bigger, please feel free to click on through to my flickr...

























And that's it. I'm ready to get started!