Planning a week means settling the hardest day first and letting the easy ones follow, with one alternative for the weather.
Start the hard day from the one piece it cannot do without, such as a suit for a wedding. Wdrobe, our phone app, lets you pin that piece and see outfits around it for that day's weather.
Fifteen minutes on a Sunday
The whole routine fits into fifteen minutes with a cup of tea: five to read the week, five to set the outfits, five to check the clothes are clean and where they should be. Any longer and it stops happening by the third week.
Plan the week in front of you rather than a repeatable template. Templates break on the first unusual day, such as a dentist appointment or a dinner nobody mentioned until Thursday.
The routine, step by step
1. Calendar and forecast side by side
Open the calendar and the forecast together, because either one alone produces a plan that fails. The forecast changes the shoes and the coat; the calendar changes everything above the waist.
2. Mark the one demanding day
Look for the day with the strictest dress code, the most walking or the earliest start, and decide that one first. It is usually only one day a week. The other four tend to be ordinary office or home days, and they can share outfits.
Planning seven different outfits is why weekly planning collapses. Two formulas and a few swaps survive a real week. Set up the two.
3. Two formulas for the ordinary days
A formula is a shape you trust, such as wide trousers with a fine knit and loafers, or a midi skirt with a tucked tee and trainers. Two formulas across four days is not repetitive if the colour or the shoe changes each time.
4. One warmer and one cooler option
Keep one extra layer ready for a cold morning and one lighter top for a warm afternoon, rather than building a second full plan. That pair is the difference between a plan and a wish.
5. A two-minute check the night before
Check laundry, shoes, bag and coat the evening before, which is where most plans actually fail. Most failures are a shirt in the wash rather than a bad decision.
A sample week
A week with a presentation on Tuesday, office days Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, and a working-from-home Friday:
- Tuesday (the demanding day): navy suit, cream silk shell, black loafers
- Monday: formula A, grey wide-leg trousers, black fine knit, loafers
- Wednesday: formula B, black midi skirt, striped tee, white trainers
- Thursday: formula A again, with the cream shell and a camel cardigan
- Friday: jeans and the black knit
- Spare: a trench for rain, a white tee for a warm afternoon
Nine pieces carry five days. The suit jacket could go over Thursday's outfit if a meeting appears, which is the kind of swap that saves the plan. If most of your weeks look like this, a work capsule wardrobe is the same idea built into the wardrobe itself.
Compare the plan with the week
At the end of the week, note where you deviated. The deviation usually points at a constraint you forgot rather than a failure of nerve.
If the same day keeps breaking, write the function that would fix it before shopping for anything.
Planning ahead? Wdrobe's outfit planner puts a week of outfits from your own clothes on a calendar and checks them against the forecast.
Frequently asked questions
How do you plan a week of outfits?
Check the calendar and the forecast together, settle the most demanding day first, then cover the other days with two outfit formulas and one spare layer. Check the clothes are clean the night before each day.
How many outfits do you need for a work week?
Three or four complete outfits cover five days, because one or two can repeat with a different top or shoe. Planning five unique outfits is more work than most weeks need.
Should you plan outfits for the weekend too?
Only the parts with a plan: a dinner, a wedding, a trip. Ordinary weekend days work better with a small casual set you can choose from on the morning.
If you would rather do this on your phone than on paper, how to use an outfit planner covers setting one up, and what app picks outfits for you compares the apps that suggest them.
Weekly planning works until the one morning you skip it, so the setup needs to be fast enough to repeat. Build a week you will not abandon by Wednesday from clothes you already own, in a single sitting.
