An inventory is the record everything else depends on. You cannot calculate cost per wear without knowing what you paid, cannot spot duplicates without seeing the list, and cannot identify what you never wear without recording what you do.
It is also the wardrobe project people most often abandon, for one avoidable reason.
Why most inventories fail
They start with the whole wardrobe. Four hours in, halfway through the tops, it stops being interesting and the file is never opened again.
The six columns that matter
Everything else is optional and most of it is never used.
| Column | Why | If you cannot fill it |
|---|---|---|
| Item | Identifies the garment | Describe it plainly — "navy wool overcoat" |
| Category | Enables grouping and counting | Tops, bottoms, outerwear, shoes is enough |
| Colour | Reveals whether you have a palette | Always fillable |
| Purchase date | Half of cost per wear, and shows garment age | Approximate year is fine |
| Price paid | The other half of cost per wear | Estimate to the nearest ten and move on |
| Times worn | The most valuable column in the file | Start at zero today |
Free template · CSV
Wardrobe Inventory Template
A ready-made CSV with these columns plus optional ones for condition, care and location. Opens in Excel, Numbers, Google Sheets or LibreOffice.
Count forward, not backward
The instinct is to estimate how many times you have already worn everything. Do not.
Those estimates are unreliable — the same optimism that inflates cost-per-wear projections inflates these — and the exercise is demoralising enough that it is where most people stop. Set every item to zero today and count from now. After one season the data is real, and real data on three months beats invented data on three years.
Photographing, if you bother
Worth it for insurance and for resale. Not necessary for the wardrobe decisions.
Efficient photography
- Lay four or five garments flat together and shoot them in one frame, then crop.
- Use daylight from a window. Consistent light matters more than good light.
- Photograph the care label at the same time — it saves looking it up later.
- For anything valuable, photograph the receipt or order confirmation alongside it.
- Name files by category and date so they sort themselves.
What it tells you after one season
Three things, none of which are visible without the record:
Which pieces carry the wardrobe. Almost always a smaller set than expected — often five or six garments doing most of the work. These are the ones worth owning twice, and the ones to replace first when they wear out.
What you never wear. The rows still at zero after six months have answered a question you were probably avoiding. This is the least painful decluttering prompt there is, because the evidence is already collected.
What things actually cost. Divide price by wears and the ranking usually reverses. The expensive coat turns out to be the cheapest thing you own; two or three cheap purchases turn out to have been the expensive ones.
The price you would actually pay, after any discount.
Be honest. For most people an occasion dress is under 5, a winter coat is 80 or more.
Dry cleaning, resoling, alterations. Leave at zero if there is none.
Cost per wear
$4.00
$120 across 30 wears.
- To reach $5.00 per wear
- 24 wears
- To reach $1.00 per wear
- 120 wears
- To reach $0.50 per wear
- 240 wears
Cost per wear is a comparison tool, not an accounting one. It is most useful when weighing two specific options against each other — this coat against that coat — rather than as an absolute verdict on a purchase.
For insurance
If the inventory is partly for a home contents claim, add two things: a photograph of each valuable item, and the original receipt or order confirmation. Insurers ask for itemised proof after a loss, and a photograph with a date and a price is a far stronger position than a recollection under stress.
Store that copy somewhere outside the house — cloud storage or email works — since the events that produce a claim frequently destroy the record too.