Wearing a Daily Uniform to Simplify Your Wardrobe & Your Life

Wearing a daily uniform is a great way to keep your wardrobe simplified and make life a lot easier too!

In today’s post, I’m sharing more about what a daily uniform is. And how it can simplify your wardrobe and make getting dressed easier.

What is a daily uniform?

A daily uniform is an outfit formula you use to make getting dressed easier and help you look and feel your best each day.

A daily uniform helps you identify the basic elements of the outfit(s) you prefer wearing and feel your best in. Then, you can repeat that outfit formula day after day, making deciding what to wear quicker and easier.

You may have one daily uniform that you prefer wearing. Or you can have a few different outfit formulas or uniforms you follow. There are no specific rules you have to use.

It’s just about figuring out how to simplify getting dressed by following  a similar outfit formula or set of formulas to get dressed in clothes and a style you feel your best in.

A daily uniform isn’t about wearing the exact same outfit or clothes everyday. It isn’t meant to be restrictive or limiting. Just the opposite in fact!

Wearing a daily uniform is simply noticing what kinds of clothes you look and feel your best in and suit your lifestyle. Then using that information to come up with one or a few basic outfit formulas you can follow to simplify the process of getting dressed.

You probably already have a daily uniform

If you’re like most of us, you probably already have a daily uniform of sorts, or a few outfit formulas you love to wear, you just don’t realize it.

Most people have certain styles, cuts, colors, color pallets, fabrics and clothing silhouettes they’re drawn to. These are usually your favourite clothes. The clothes you wear most often, feel most yourself in and feel most confident when you’re wearing them.

Think about your favourite outfits or favourite items of clothing. What do they have in common?

This is the first step towards figuring out your daily uniform. Simply noticing what you already look and feel your best in!

Once you know what your daily uniform or favourite outfit formulas are, you can use this information to get more intentional with your wardrobe.

Use your uniform or outfit formulas to weed out the clothes you don’t love, don’t wear and don’t look or feel your best in. Once you remove those types of clothes from your wardrobe and focus on creating a wardrobe that works with your daily uniform or outfit formula(s), getting dressed will be a lot faster and easier.

Not only can you follow your outfit formula or uniform to know exactly how to make an outfit you’ll love and feel good in. But your wardrobe will be intentionally curated to only include clothes you look and feel great in, using your formula(s) to narrow your wardrobe down.

The benefits of wearing a daily uniform

Before getting into how to figure out the uniform or outfit formula that will work best for you, let’s talk about the benefits of using a uniform when getting dressed!

Makes getting dressed easier

A daily uniform makes it easy to decide what to wear. Instead of starting from scratch, you already know what your favourite outfits look like. Then you can simply pull the pieces you’ll need from your wardrobe to make your uniform.

Saves time

When you follow a formula to put outfits together, you already know exactly what you like to wear and which items of clothing you need to pick out. This means you can put an outfit together that you’ll look and feel good in, in less time.

Less decision fatigue

There’s a reason some super successful people in the world wear the same thing everyday: it means they have fewer decisions to make in the day and can focus on more important decisions instead.

People like Barack Obama, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs are all examples of highly successful people who wear the same thing every day. They may be more extreme examples of wearing a daily uniform. But are still good examples to show how a uniform can reduce decision fatigue.

In an interview, Barack Obama said, “You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy.”

Decision fatigue is a real thing. Your brain can only make so many decisions each day before the quality of your decision-making abilities starts to decrease. If you know your decision-making ability each day is finite and degrades with each decision you make – anything you can do to reduce the number of unimportant decisions from your day the better!

Simplifies your wardrobe

When you wear a daily uniform or a few different uniforms, you don’t need as many clothes. You stop chasing trends, because you know what you like and what works best for you, your body, your lifestyle, and your preferences.

You can have fewer clothes because you only need pieces that work with your favourite uniform or outfit formulas. When you simplify down to your favourite outfit formulas, you can have a smaller wardrobe. And still know it will work for you and let you always wear your favourite clothes!

Helps you clear the clutter from your wardrobe

When you know what you like to wear, and what does and doesn’t work for you, it makes it a lot easier to clear the clutter from your wardrobe.

If something doesn’t fit with your uniform or preferred outfit formulas, it’s a lot easier to give yourself permission to let it go!

Saves money

Once you know what you like to wear, you can shop for clothes a lot more intentionally. And likely buy fewer clothes overall.

Instead of buying clothes on a whim or chasing trends and ending up with a closet full of random items that are hard to mix and match with each other, a daily uniform gives you an easy set of guidelines to follow when shopping.

If you’ve ever stood in front of your closet and felt like you have a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear – it’s probably partially because the clothes in your wardrobe don’t work well together to make outfits you love.

When you only buy pieces that work with your uniform or your preferred outfit formulas, you’ll know exactly what will and won’t work for you and with your wardrobe.

Not only can you buy fewer clothes. But you will also avoid wasting money on clothes you don’t end up wearing or don’t work well with your wardrobe.

When you are clear about what outfits and clothes you love to wear and feel your best in, you can stop following clothing trends. You are clear about your own personal style and don’t need to waste time, money or energy trying to keep up with ever-changing trends!

More confidence

You know how great you feel when you wear something you look and feel your best in? When you use an outfit formula you love, that can be every day!

By taking the time to notice and pay attention to what you feel your best in, you dress in a way that makes you feel confident and great in your clothes every day.

Less stress, more freedom

All of these benefits add up to give you less stress and more freedom. The freedom to look and feel your best, all while saving time, energy, money and stress!

Taking steps to simplify your wardrobe by wearing a daily uniform or outfit formula is a great way to do all of this!

How to find your daily uniform

There are a few different ways you can find your daily uniform or favourite outfit formula(s).

Notice what you feel your best in

The easiest way to find your daily uniform or favourite outfit formula(s) is to start noticing what you’re wearing when you feel your best. Pay attention to what you wear on days you feel good and feel confident in your outfit.

Also notice when you don’t feel great in your clothes. Notice when you don’t feel like yourself, when something about your clothes bothers you or when you just don’t love an outfit.

Noticing what does and doesn’t work for you is a great way to find your daily uniform or outfit formula(s).

As you’re noticing when you feel good in an outfit or not, start looking for specific elements the clothes you love and don’t love have in common.

For example, pay attention to the colors, fabrics, cuts, silhouettes, styles, etc. of clothes you both love wearing and don’t feel entirely comfortable in.

The more you pay attention to these elements, the more you’ll start to notice patterns emerging. You’ll start noticing what colors you prefer, what cuts and silhouettes you feel best in, what types of fabrics you prefer, etc.

Then use this information to put together the outfit formula(s) you love best.

Start collecting images of outfits you like

If you’re still stumped, start collecting images of outfits you love. Pinterest is a great resource for this. Start by pinning any outfit you like. Then look through your pinned outfits looking for trends and similarities across the outfits.

This can help you begin to see what style or styles you are drawn towards.

Then use what you’re learning to put some outfits together using clothes in your wardrobe. As you do, pay attention to how you feel in each outfit. Notice what you like and don’t like to continue refining your style.

Another great source for outfit inspiration with a simplified wardrobe is Cladwell. They have resources to help you build a capsule wardrobe, teach you how to build a capsule wardrobe that will work for you, and an app to input your wardrobe pieces and receive daily outfit ideas and inspiration!

Notice what other people are wearing

Another way to start figuring out your personal style is by noticing what other people are wearing when you like their outfit. Notice what items they are wearing and what you like about those items. Look for similarities or themes in the outfits you like.

Then, try wearing similar outfits and see how you look and feel.

But remember, there is a big difference between liking an outfit on someone else, and liking a similar outfit on yourself. You can find inspiration from other people’s outfits, but the styles, colors, cuts, fabrics and outfits may or may not always make you look and feel good.

Use any inspiration you find online or in real life as ideas to try. But remember to focus on finding what makes you look and feel your best.

Use a daily uniform to find freedom, not restriction

A daily uniform or outfit formula doesn’t have to be boring, completely repetitive or restricting. And it doesn’t mean you have to wear the exact same outfit day after day – unless you want to!

Instead, a daily uniform can give you an outfit formula to follow in terms of style, cuts, colors, fabrics, etc. Then you can change up the elements within your uniform to give yourself variety and interest. All while still making it quick and easy to get dressed.

Example of a daily uniform

For example, one of my favourite outfit formulas is skinny jeans or leggings, a flowy top and a long, open-front cardigan. And my preferred color palette is black, grey and burgundy.

There are many ways to keep this uniform interesting and add some variety. But still make it quick and easy to get dressed each day.

For example, I could wear dark skinny jeans, light skinny jeans, grey skinny jeans, black skinny jeans, burgundy skinny jeans, black leggings or grey leggings. I can wear the same variety of colors in tops and cardigans. A graphic tee will look different from a plain tee. Adding a necklace or scarf can change the look as well.

The outfit formula or uniform gives me guidelines to follow so I know what elements I need to make an outfit I love and feel great in. Then I can switch up the individual pieces within my uniform to add variety and interest.

Simplify your life with a daily uniform

A daily uniform is a great way to simplify your wardrobe and help simplify your life. Not only will getting dressed be faster and easier, but you can save time, money and stress too!

A daily uniform is a great way to find clothes you love wearing and look and feel your best in. All so you can worry less about what you’re wearing, and focus more on living your life!

Because in the big scheme of things, it’s not about what you wear anyway. It’s about who you are as a person and how you live your life. You are not what you wear. You are so much more than that!

Do you use a daily uniform or outfit formula(s) to simplify getting dressed? I would love to hear about your daily uniform. Leave a comment below!