What Kind of Clothes Deserve to Be Hung Up?

My last apartment had too much furniture, so I looked for a place with none.

The new place is very empty. The bedroom has just one huge wardrobe made of two identical units joined together.

It gives me two full hanging sections, and while moving in, it made me think seriously for the first time: what kind of clothes actually deserve to be hung up?

I thought about it carefully. Before this, the clothes I hung up were mostly bulky ones: coats, down jackets, suits, and so on. They had the best spots, yet I only reached for them a few times a year.

Meanwhile the clothes I wore all the time were always folded in drawers or on shelves.

In the end I hung up all the clothes I wear often, and they filled one section. In the other section I hung my cycling gear. Cycling clothes are actually very light and small, and folded up they hardly take any space. But because I wear them so often, I hung them all up anyway.

My cycling gear looks like more than my everyday clothes: two long-sleeve jerseys, a windbreaker, four pairs of cycling shorts, a pair of cycling tights, and a moisture-wicking base layer. I have to say, hanging up they look really nice.

As for the clothes that had always hung in the hanging sections, apart from my suits, I folded nearly all of them away.

While folding them, I realized some I hadn't worn in a year or two.

They took up the best space and gave nothing back. They're like the activities, relationships, and habits in our lives that we keep up out of habit, even though they mean nothing.

It suddenly struck me: how many things take up a prominent place in our lives like this for years, while we look right past them?

Health, for one. We count on being young and burn through our health like a brand-new piece of clothing, assuming it will never wear out. Then one day the body is like that sweater with holes worn through the elbows, reminding us that the damage can't be undone, and by then it's too late for regrets.

Or relationships. Family, friendship, love. We take them for granted and assume they'll always be there waiting, like the old suit in the wardrobe. We don't realize that neglect lets friendships drift apart, that parents can grow old all at once, and that the flame of love can go out quietly when it's ignored.

Life is full of things like this. They're like the clothes I used to hang in the wardrobe: long forgotten, yet still hanging there.

And the things that are with us every moment are the ones we shove into a corner.

So I think we need to clear out our wardrobes more often, and see which clothes deserve to be hung up, and which ones it's time to put away.