One of my clients has a lot of bikinis.

She came to me overwhelmed about her financials and ominous trips to the mailbox, with bills awaiting. After surmounting that hill, we moved on to lighter subjects. With newfound confidence, she was ready to tackle clothes. Her struggle was more volume-related than places to fit and organize them. 

Over a series of coaching calls, I saw piles emerge, ready to leave her nest. She was purging left and right, handling decades of clothing and accessory accumulation. 

Then we got to the bathing suits. Living in Southern California with a pool in her backyard, having a nice stash of bathing suits is appropriate for her lifestyle. But how many bathing suits are too many?

The “numbers question” often arises. After several years of helping clients like her, there are only a few product categories where I have a general suggestion for how many of “X items” should be retained. The number for each person depends on various factors, and there’s no perfect answer.

When considering how to pare the bikinis down and come up with the best quantity for her, we discovered something surprising: sentimental bikinis. These were the bathing suits that she identified as never-to-be-worn-again. These were the kinds that were worn at a particular time in her life, like a memorable vacation. Some were decades old. Some no longer fit.

The decision-making process was advantaged by her clarity that she’d never wear some of them again. But this is where the confusion began. 

What do you do with a bikini you never wear but are hard to let go of? Most people default to leaving it in the swimsuit drawer. It’s a relatively small item, and, well, it’s a bikini, so the organizational approach seems obvious.

But while it’s physically a bikini, it’s not used as a bikini. It’s used as a piece of memorabilia. When it comes to organizing, functionality is paramount. Memorabilia is interacted with differently than bikinis (obviously). This form versus function problem often pops up with clothing but applies to everything you own. Items are organized best when they have a similar use case.

This then reframes the question of whether or not to keep an item. Defaulting to saving a bikini in a swimsuit drawer makes it easier to keep. What’s one more bikini option? But when we pose a different question, we may come to a different decision. In this case, the question is: Would you like to save this in a box of memorabilia?

In some cases, this question helps us let the item go now that it’s sunk in that we will no longer wear the bikini. Perhaps it doesn’t rise to the level of memorabilia. 

If we decide to keep the item, we can experience it differently. It’s no longer out of place, obscuring the other bikinis we’d consider wearing. Now, when we look at it, we can focus on its memory invoking specialness. Though, I don’t suggest creating an entire box of swimwear-related memorabilia. We still need to be choosey to get closer to the minimalist lifestyle we're seeking.