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DAY 7: 30 Day NO-BUY Challenge

Day 7: The Items Least Worn Formula (And Why 70% Of Your Closet Is Untapped)

On Day 7 of the 30 Day No Buy Challenge, we dive into three powerful tools to unlock the 70% of our closets we rarely wear.

First, we use the Items Least Worn Formula, where we start our outfits with the pieces we almost never reach for, turning forgotten items into hidden gems. Then we move into the Style Study Formula, a playful session where we take that one piece, try it with lots of combinations, snap photos of anything that even kind of works, and save them into our What To Wear albums so rushed mornings become easier. Finally, we practice the New Eyes Formula, where we notice the pieces we’ve been seeing in only one way and reimagine how they can work for the life we are living right now.

Along the way, I talk honestly about why you feel weird and doubtful when you try something new, how to bring back the magic of a childhood dress up box, and I share the story of the “ugliest” fur jacket that somehow became one of my greatest sources of joy.

This episode is an invitation to stop buying more, start playing more, and see your closet as a powerful, playful dress up box that is fully yours again.

ACTION STEPS:

Day 7 Action Steps: The Items Least Worn Formula

1. Set up your “play time” (not rushed time).

  • Choose a pocket of time when you are not getting ready to leave.
  • Grab your coffee, tea, or glass of wine.
  • Intentionally decide, “This is my style play session,” not “I have to get dressed right now.”

Step 1: Choose Your Item Least Worn

  • Go into your closet and look for:
    • Pieces you rarely or almost never wear.
    • Things you keep skipping past, even though you like them.
  • Pick one item to start with (tops, pants, dress, jacket, anything).

Step 2: Do A Style Study With That One Piece (Style Study Formula)

  • Take your chosen piece and:
    • Try it with lots of different bottoms, tops, layers, and shoes.
    • Do not overthink it, just keep pairing and experimenting.
  • For every combo that even kind of works:
    • Take a quick photo (mirror selfie is perfect).
    • You do not need a fully finished outfit, a strong base is enough.

Step 3: Save Everything To Your WHAT TO WEAR Album

  • Create or open your What To Wear photo album on your phone.
  • Add:
    • All the “this could work” base combos.
    • All the fully finished outfits you like.
  • This album is what you will use on rushed mornings instead of starting from scratch.

Step 4: Use New Eyes On Old Roles (New Eyes Formula)

  • Look at that item and ask:
    • “Have I only let this be one thing? Workwear? Pre‑kids? ‘Dressy only’?”
  • Brainstorm at least 2–3 new contexts for it:
    • Can it work dressed down with sneakers?
    • Can it be layered differently (open over leggings, under a jacket, with a tee)?
    • Can you swap heels for flats or boots to fit your actual life right now?

Step 5: Notice The Weird Feelings, Keep Playing Anyway

  • Expect to feel:
    • A little awkward.
    • Unsure.
    • Like, “Is this too much?” or “Who do I think I am?”
  • When that comes up, remind yourself:
    • “This is my dress up box moment, I am just playing.”
    • If you can harness the magic of playing dress up, you start to take back the power the fashion industry has had over you.
    • “I do not have to wear all of these outfits out today, I am just trying things.”

Step 6: Repeat When You Feel “I Have Nothing To Wear”

Any time you catch yourself thinking, “I have nothing in here”:

  1. Pause.
  2. Ask, “What is one item least worn I can start with?”
  3. Run a mini style study, even if it is just 10 minutes.
  4. Add anything new to your What To Wear album.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Intro

Hello, I'm Casey, your fashion bestie.

We are on Day 7 of the 30 Day No Buy Challenge, and you are helping spark fashion wellness revolution, where we use style confidence to create a better relationship with our closet and ourselves.

We are going to start right off the bat with a new formula. It is called the item's least worn formula.

To recap, we have learned my change one thing formula, my formula for how to wear your sparkle all throughout the year, my pantry of possibilities style formula, and we are making sure we capture photos of all of these new outfits to put in our what to wear album, so all of your hard work doesn't go to waste.

Items Least Worn Formula

So what is this new formula I'm talking about? It is called the items least worn formula. And can you guess it? Can you guess what it is? I think you can. It's pretty much as simple as you think.

It is looking around your closet and finding the things that we wear the least, and we start our outfit with those. It sounds really simple, but we often don't do this. Too often, we go to our closet, we grab our go to things that we're most comfortable with, and we often leave about 70% of our closet untouched. 70%, you guys.

And so this is the idea that we switch that and switch our lens, and we go into our closet, and we start with an item that is barely worn, or almost maybe never worn, in your closet. And you start with that, and you style it from there.

Can you imagine if we're not using 70% of our closet, and we start with those items, and start our outfit with that? You have more than probably 100 pieces. That's 70 more outfits. Can you believe that?

This is the formula that I have gotten so many new outfits out of, because these pieces that are in your closet that you never wear are little gems. They're such good little gems that are hidden in there that are not being used. And remember, these little pieces are all our friends, and we're not using them. We're not taking them out and about, and they want to be out in the world.

Give Yourself Time

So my advice around this is to give yourself time. It is one of our biggest mistakes that we try to style something new when we are rushed in the morning. This is why most of your closet doesn't work for you, because we are trying to style ourselves under pressure, and not giving us the correct amount of time to do so.

And so, please, set aside some time. You owe it to yourself, to shop your closet, and to set aside some time for you to create. Let that creative energy flow, grab a glass of wine, you grab your coffee, and set aside some time for you to do this.

Style Study Formula

And what we're gonna do is we're gonna take that item, and we're gonna run through our closet, and try on a whole bunch of different stuff, and see what goes with it. I call it a style study. So I take one piece, run through so many different options, and I capture it.

I take pictures of everything that even semi works, because this is a thing, you're not, you don't need full outfits to take pictures of. That's great, too. The reason we want to take pictures, even if the outfit is not completely done, is because it can be a good starting point, and then you just add a few more things to it. So it could be a really good base.

This is a good example, like, say, if we're going back to the ingredients in our pantry kind of example. Say I'm making, I don't know, chicken salad, and I'm putting chicken with mayo, and I feel like that's really good. It could go on multiple different things, right? So I jot that down, and I go, okay, I'm remembering that this is good together, but maybe it could go with a bunch of other things.

So the next time I come back to, I'm like, okay, I'm making this chicken salad. Ooh, add bread. That would be a really good sandwich. So I add it to bread, and, oh, yeah, it's a great sandwich. I write that recipe down. Next time, I go, “Oh, that chicken salad, oh, let's put it on lettuce and actually make a salad out of it.” I'm like, oh, that's a really good one, too.

So your base can go with multiple different things. And so, sometimes you just even want to take a picture of a good starting off point.

What To Wear Album

Going back to what we're doing. You're taking your item least worn. You're now running through your closet and trying it on with a bunch of different things. You're capturing anything that remotely works with it, and, of course, build full outfits as well. Take pictures of those, and then you log these into your what to wear album.

Then, when you are in a rush in the morning, you're not trying to style anything. You're just going straight to your what to wear album, and choosing something, and you have all these options.

So you're just gonna do that on repeat. Every time you feel like you don't have anything left in your closet, you go, “Wait a minute. What is an item least worn here, and let's start with that.”

A lot of the times, it's your favorite pieces that you forgot about. And when you bring new life to them, it's such a joy. I promise you, I have gotten so many new outfits by just this formula.

So when you try it on with everything, I call it a style study formula. You're about to learn three different formulas back to back. So we're starting with items least worn formula. Then you're going into using the style study formula, where you're running through your whole closet, studying this one piece and seeing how it works.

New Eyes Formula

And now, you're gonna go into the new eyes formula. My new eyes formula is looking at items in your closet differently with new eyes.

Let's take a suit, for example. Say it's a work suit that you're not wearing anymore. Maybe you dress more casual now, or maybe you don't go into the office anymore, but these beautiful work suits are sitting in your closet.

Instead of looking at it as a suit, let's break it into pieces. Wear those really cool slack pants with a more casual top, with a baggy sweater, with a cool, unexpected jacket. And then wear maybe the suit jacket with jeans, and some booties, and a white tee, and some funky jewelry.

And all of a sudden, you're looking at that suit that originally you would only wear to the office for an office meeting as two separate pieces that can be worn in multitude of different ways.

Or maybe we take those slack pants, and we still want to wear them dressy, but we pair it with sparkly top for an event, and the outfit becomes less stiff, not a stiff suit, just a really nice, elegant outfit for an event.

Life Shift Example

I had to do this when I went from boutique owner to being a mom. I owned a L.A. boutique where I could dress as eccentric as I wanted. I was in heels every day. Two or three years after that, I was a mom, looking at my closet, finally feeling I could dress for myself again after being pregnant, after breastfeeding, all of that, and not recognizing my closet at all.

So I used my new eyes formula, and I went into my closet and started looking at everything I had with different eyes.

Let's take a collared, loose, button down dress, for example. Imagine, like, a long men's shirt that I used to belt and wear with heels. Well, now, I'm not gonna wear that outfit as a mom doing school drop off. But what can I do with that?

I can now unbutton it and wear it over leggings and a casual top. I can keep it buttoned up, wear as a dress, but maybe with sneakers or flats. I can unbelt it, wear it with jeans, and tuck one side in, and it's a whole nother look.

Before kids, as much as I only saw that dress as something I put a belt around and wore it with heels, I then went into my closet with new eyes and reimagined how that piece could work in my life now.

The Hamster Wheel Of Buying

And that is where we get stuck in this hamster wheel of buying more and more, because you feel like you need new clothes for every stage you are in in life, because that's how you've always been marketed, but that's just untrue.

There are so many things that can work in your closet in different stages of your life if you just look at how to style them differently.

Feeling Weird Is Normal

This is the part that I'm gonna tell you you're gonna feel weird. You're not gonna be sure. You're gonna be trying on things. You're gonna have a lot of self doubt, and I just want to let you know that it takes practice to get rid of that self doubt and to find your confidence.

So don't assume that you are gonna just feel so confident right off the bat. You are taking chances, which is amazing, and, like I said before, you are being brave to try something new. The weird feeling is gonna be normal, so just anticipate that.

The Dress Up Box

But what I want you to envision is, how many of you had a dress up box when you were young? Or maybe you have kids that have a dress up box, and you can see the power in that dress up box. Whether you had it or your kids have it, or neither, and you can just imagine this.

You would walk up to that dress up box and put something on, and it could be wild, and it could not imagine. It could be eccentric, and you felt like you owned the world. You felt powerful. You felt like nothing could touch you. You were creative. You were expressing yourself, and it was magical.

I want to let you know that that dress up box never went away. You even have a bigger dress up box right in front of you, and it is called your closet. This box lets you feel and be whoever you want to be, if you give it the power to do so.

The hard thing is, as we grew up, the magic went away, and the voices came in, and all the negativity, and all the rules, and all the things society is telling you of who you should be, and the magic went away from this box. But I am telling you here and now that the dress box is still in front of you, waiting for you to take your power back. Take your power back.

If you can embrace play, if you can embrace the idea of playing dress up again, and having fun, and seeing different combinations for the sake of play, you get your power back. You get your power back from the fashion industry. You get your power back from all the marketing. You get your power back from all the rules that you've ever heard of what you're supposed to be.

You are simply just playing and feeling that power and feeling however you want to feel, however you want to dress, and that is the magic of your closet.

Nordstrom Fur Jacket Story

Let me tell you a story. So, about 10 years ago, I was in Nordstrom, I rack, and I was with my husband, at the time he was just my boyfriend. And we were going through, looking at all the random things at Nordstrom.

And I spotted this fur jacket that had these dark blue sleeves fur and dark red body fur, and I looked at it and picked it up and showed it to him, and said, “This is probably one of the ugliest things I have ever seen in my life.” And I was like, “Let's go try it on.”

So we go to the mirror, and I try it on, and for some reason, after I tried it on, I kind of just fell in love with it. I’m like, I might need this. And so I bought it, and lo and behold, this has been, for the last 10 years, now one of my favorite jackets I wear all the time.

And if I didn't have the mindset of play in style, I would have missed out on this piece that has been such a huge piece of joy for the last 10 years of my life. I would have missed out on that. If I was just like, “No, not for me, that's gross,” and skipped over it, I would have missed out on this piece of clothing that has brought me so much joy.

So that is really the importance of play, and to feel joyful, and to wear things that just speak to your heart. And maybe you don't even know why, and it doesn't make sense why you like something, and that's okay too. If you like it, don't try to make sense out of it. Just wear it.

Final Recap Of The Formulas

Let's go back to the formulas I started with just to recap, where we're at with today's challenge.

The items least worn formula, we're gonna choose an item in your closet that you haven't worn in a while, then you're gonna do the style study formula, where you're gonna go match it and pair it with just so many things in your closet and finding some good pieces to pair it with. Of course, during this, we're going to capture it with pictures, right?

And then the new eyes formula kind of goes with the items least worn formula, because if you're going in with new eyes, you might start seeing things differently with the items least worn in your closet. So they kind of go hand in hand.

You're gonna feel weird, but you're gonna apply the idea of a dress up box, and the idea that you are there to play. You are not there for a serious moment of making an outfit. You are there to play.

Closing

That's it, my friends. That is Day 7 of the 30 Day No Buy Challenge. I hope it inspires you to look at your closet differently.

Of course, like I always say, if you have any questions, send them to me. I'm your biggest cheerleader. I am here for you, and I cannot wait to hear how you do on this challenge. All right?

I love you. Have a great day. Signing off. Casey, your fashion bestie. I will be back tomorrow.