So my Style Challenge came to an end after 12 days of taking photos of my outfit every single day then publishing them on the blog no matter what they looked like. It was by no means a ground breaking experience and wasn’t exactly monumental, but it was a pretty awesome to start off the New Year for me. Let’s look a bit more at why!
Confidence
It gave me the confidence to get back into posting outfits, no matter what the background looked like and no matter whether the outfit was “blog-worthy” or not. The reason I did the style challenge in the first place was because I’d got out of the habit of taking outfit photos for a couple of reasons: one, because I thought I’d didn’t have time for them; and two, because I didn’t feel my outfits and photography were worthy enough to bother publishing them. But actually it reminded me that I like having a record of what I wore, to remember what outfits I felt good in, what I would and wouldn’t wear again, and strangely enough, I tend to remember what happened on certain days better if I can put an outfit to it!
Wardrobe
I’ve mentioned time and time again how I’ve been fairly fed up with my wardrobe recently. I’ve been slowly paring it down over time, taking out a piece or two every couple of days to go to charity. Then over Christmas I did a big clear out. And as I’ve done this challenge, I’ve got more into my sense of personal style again, am realising what I like and what I don’t like to wear, and am getting rid of even more clothes. I’m planning a post on how I personally get rid of clothes soon (as in, how I choose whether to keep them and where I take them), so keep an eye out for that!
Goals
Finally, taking outfit photos every day gave me a discipline that was brilliant at the start of the year for keeping up with the goals I’d set myself. I realised that I did have the time to take pictures of my outfits, just so long as I didn’t laze around those extra 15 minutes in bed. In fact, I felt all the better for getting up earlier, getting photos taken, tidying the house a little bit and getting a smoothie ready before work.
Respect
And leading on from the two above, I felt that I ended up having more respect for my clothes. Instead of chucking them on the floor when I was done wearing them and grabbing the nearest things to hand or off the top of my drawer in the morning, I was putting them away where they were supposed to go and carefully selecting clothes to make an outfit the night before, either when I went up to bed or when I went to put my pyjamas on earlier in the evening.
So overall, a pretty awesome experience for me overall! While right now I’m not taking daily outfits any more (let this photo give one reason why not!), I’m definitely feeling happier about publishing photos of my standard work-day outfits and will continue to do so throughout the year.