How much is "enough"?

On planetary boundaries, overconsumption, and redefining our sense of enoughness

The average person added 59 items to their closet in the past year Indyx reported.

Yet the Hot or Cool Institute's Unfit, Unfair, Unfashionable report found that we would need to limit our purchases to a fraction of that — five new garments per year if no other actions were taken — to keep our consumption in line with global climate goals.

(Though it's important to caveat here that we don't know how many of those 59 garments per year from the Indyx report were new vs. secondhand.)

Indyx also found that the average person currently has a total of 166 garments in their wardrobe.

Meanwhile the Hot or Cool Institute's report suggests that a sufficient closet consists of just 74 pieces (including shoes) in a two-season climate and 85 garments in a four-season country.

That's a big gap.

This definition of a “sufficient” wardrobe sounds almost completely unreasonable — until you read on to see that just a couple of generations ago, the average French wardrobe consisted of 40 pieces in total.

How is it possible that our closets ballooned to 4x the size in the past 60 years, yet we're still buying more stuff than ever before?

How did we previously consider 40 pieces in a closet to be “enough” while today this number sounds appropriate only for an extreme minimalist?

To be clear, this isn't about blaming any individual. We are surrounded by fashion marketing, retargeted marketing, and a push to consume just about everywhere we turn. But how can we find our own sense of enoughness, amidst all of the noise?

Well first, I think it's worth pausing to ask what enough even means to us.

Defining enough-ness

While scientific reports can tell us a maximum number of new garments per person the planet can handle, our sense of “enough” seems to be more of an ever-moving target than a finish line.

Admittedly, there isn't necessarily a scientific answer of “enough” clothing from an individual needs point of view. While nutrition science can help us calculate how many calories and nutrients each person needs, how many pieces we “need” in our closets is far more nuanced.

But it's an important question — especially amidst economic uncertainty, tariff volatility, and climate breakdown.

👖 We might need to consider practical lifestyle questions like:

• Do you have a dress code at an office? Can you wear your everyday clothing to your workplace? Do you work from home?

• What's the climate like where you live? Does it rain or snow? What's the temperature variance?

• What activities do you partake in? Do you do yoga, hike, dance, climb, bike?

• How many days a week do you go out or have evening work commitments where you need to dress up?

• How many layers do you like to / need to wear?

• Do you go through body fluctuations throughout a given month or season? (This can tell us things like: do you need to own jeans in several sizes?)

• Do you have the budget or time for mending if an urgent need arises?

• Do you value simplicity or do you like to have some options? (I.e. what's going to keep you engaged with your closet rather than feeling an urge to shop?)

• And importantly, how many clothes do you already have in your closet that fit?

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Why I look at my closet like a donut 🍩

Not in the pastry sense, but like the signature Doughnut visual of Doughnut Economics!

Doughnut Economics proposes an economic mindset that can meet the needs of humanity while staying within planetary boundaries.

“The Doughnut is the core concept at the heart of Doughnut Economics.

The Doughnut consists of two concentric rings: a social foundation, to ensure that no one is left falling short on life’s essentials, and an ecological ceiling, to ensure that humanity does not collectively overshoot the planetary boundaries that protect Earth's life-supporting systems.

Between these two sets of boundaries lies a doughnut-shaped space that is both ecologically safe and socially just: a space in which humanity can thrive.”

👕 In this case, the minimum number of garments should be able to meet what each person needs to live with dignity.

Our clothes should be able to help us meet our physical needs, support — or at least not detrimentally impact — our health, and I would add: allow us self-expression and support our self-esteem. Anything below that would be the “hole” of the donut.

Of course the “expression” part is challenging to define, as social media and fast fashion have trained us to believe we need to constantly reinvent our wardrobe to be creatively inspired. But if we think of expression in a more innate, deeper sense, this doesn't require constant closet overhauls.

🌏 How much is too much for planetary boundaries?

From a consumption perspective, that Hot or Cool Institute report told us that this is 5 new garments per year (if no other actions are taken).

But what about the maximum number of clothes in our closets?

Looking at the realities of where our donated and “recycled” clothes often end up, dumping half of our closets to reach some magical wardrobe size isn't exactly a sustainable approach.

In fact, as far as the planet is concerned, keeping our clothes as long as physically possible would be our best bet.

👗 Yet the average person hasn't worn 25% of their closets in the past year, as Indyx found. So we also have a lot of underutilized garments that could be swapped with a friend, repurposed, or resold on the secondhand market.

When we're responsibly re-homing these garments, perhaps the maximum number in our closets could be how many clothes we reasonably wear in a year. (There are some exceptions, like special occasion wear that you might rely on wearing every other year, for example.)

Generally speaking though, this gives us a concrete definition of enough-ness in our closets while allowing for enough flexibility to accommodate for various lifestyle needs.

This feels more realistic than saying everyone should limit to 85 garments.

Now for the hard part…

Even once we know the science and the math of it all, it can still feel tough to operate under these boundaries.

There are the social factors:

• If our friends are buying new dresses for every wedding and occasion, will we feel like an outsider when we don't?

• When we wear the same 12 workwear staples every week, will our colleagues think we don't do our laundry?

• If we keep wearing these certain types of jeans, will we look “outdated”?

💭 And the personal ones:

• What would it feel like to engage with fashion without shopping?

• What would it look like to consider your next purchase as a long-term relationship with that garment?

It's worth evaluating: what is your “enough” point? What would your “enough” closet look and feel like?

It's easy to think that we would know once we get to that point what enough feels like.

But without a defined end point, the perpetual thought of “just one more” is far too tempting.

There's always one more garment, one more handbag, one more pair of shoes to have — and if we're not mindful of it, we might have what was once our dream closet only to still be stuck in an overconsumption loop.

This isn't about never buying anything again — but it's about not shopping out of the artificial scarcity that fast fashion feeds on.

The 190 pieces in my closet certainly feel like enough, if not more than enough — I'm in the process of slowly but surely responsibly re-homing some pieces.

Even when I had a larger closet, though, it didn't always feel like enough.

Enoughness is a number — but a sense of enoughness is a state of mind. And a cultural shift.

📝 As usual, I like to leave you with more questions to consider rather than a single defined answer:

• What is your closet's “enough" finish line? How would you define it? What makes it feel like not enough right now?

• How would your patterns or habits shift once you reach that point of enough-ness? (Or how might they be able to shift now if you are at that point?)

• How many pieces per year feel like “enough"? Too much?

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