Most of the mamas who write to me have a closet full of clothes and absolutely nothing to wear. That sentence is usually true in a particular way: the clothes are there, but none of them are talking to each other and half of them do not open. A capsule is not a shopping list that fixes this. It is an afternoon with the drawers open and one question asked of every piece.

I did this for the first time on a Sunday with a baby asleep in the bouncer and a toddler emptying the sock drawer beside me, which is to say I did it in twenty-minute pieces across a whole afternoon, and that is fine. Nobody does this in one calm hour. By the end I had twelve pieces on one rail and a pile for the loft, and the next morning I got dressed in four minutes for the first time since the birth. I had not bought anything. I had only decided.

This is the method, in seven steps you can do with a baby on you. At the end you will have your own breastfeeding capsule from your own clothes, a short list of the two or three gaps worth buying, and a morning that no longer starts with standing in front of a closet full of nothing.

Step 1. Empty one category at a time, not the whole closet

Tops first. All of them on the bed. Not the whole wardrobe at once; that way lies a bed you cannot sleep in and a job you abandon at the toddler’s nap. Tops this afternoon, bottoms tomorrow, dresses and layers the day after. Twenty minutes each.

Have three places ready: the rail (keep), a box (not now, keep for a year), and a bag (go). You are too tired to make permanent decisions well, so the box is where the maybes go.

Step 2. Ask the one question: does it open?

Hold each top up and ask whether you could feed in it with one hand while holding a baby with the other. Buttons at the front, a wrap, a V-neck that pulls aside over a tank, a hem that lifts. If yes, it goes to the rail. If it comes off over your head and nothing else, it goes in the box, however much you love it.

You will be surprised by how much passes. Most shirts, every cardigan, most V-necks, every wrap. The pile that does not pass is usually the tight crew-necks and the pretty things with zips at the back.

Step 3. Pick the five colours that are already there

Look at the rail. There will be colours that repeat: usually two neutrals, a dark, a warm and one colour you keep buying. Those five are your palette. Anything on the rail outside them goes in the box. This is the step that makes the capsule feel like a capsule, because now anything you pull out goes with anything else.

If you are not sure which colours are yours rather than just habits, the Colour Season Quiz takes two minutes and is free. Mine are navy, ivory, espresso, taupe and a dusty rose.

From the capsules

The Year Round Capsule

Two hundred nursing-friendly outfits from fifty-six pieces, fifty for every season, laid out and then worn. $29 once, yours to keep.

See the capsule →

Step 4. Add the clip tanks, and nothing else yet

The one purchase that unlocks the rail: two clip-down nursing tanks, one pale and one dark. Under every top that passed step two, the tank is what makes the opening quick and private. Without it, a shirt is a shirt. With it, a shirt is a nursing top that does not look like one.

Do not buy anything else until step six. The point of the afternoon is to find out what you have before you find out what you want.

Step 5. Bottoms: keep the ones with soft waists, in your size now

The same question, different test: does the waistband sit above a scar and stay there? Soft joggers, wide trousers with an elastic back, a pull-on skirt, jeans with stretch in the size you are this month. The jeans from before go in the box, not the bag; you are allowed to want them later and you are allowed never to want them again.

Three bottoms is enough for a capsule. Four is generous. Everything above them should go with all of them, which the five colours have already arranged.

Step 6. Count the gaps, and buy at most three

Lay the rail out as outfits: one dark, one pale, one that opens, one layer. Where you keep reaching for something that is not there, that is a gap. Usually it is a wrap top, a cardigan that opens, or a bottom in the right colour. Write the gaps down, then buy the two or three that keep coming up and no more.

Secondhand first for the gaps; a linen shirt that has been washed fifty times is softer than a new one. The budget capsule post has the honest numbers if you do have to buy.

Step 7. Hang it as outfits, not as categories

The last twenty minutes. Hang the rail in the order you dress: tank, top, layer, with the bottom beside it. Make six or seven outfits you can see at a glance, so the morning is copying, not choosing. Photograph the rail on your phone; on the days you cannot think, scroll the photo instead of the closet.

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Twelve pieces in five colours, three bottoms, two shoes. That is twenty-five outfits, and you did not go shopping. The version with every outfit already laid out and worn, and the formula written down so you can rebuild it in any colours, is the Year Round Capsule. The version where you pick twelve pieces and Anah writes the thirty outfits for you is the Twelve.

What to do with the box

Put it in the loft or under the bed with the date on it. In a year, open it. Some of it will fit and open and you will be glad you kept it. Most of it you will not remember owning, and that is the permission to let it go. Nobody should make wardrobe decisions in the first year; the box is how you do not have to.

The bag goes to a charity shop this week, before it becomes a fourth pile.

The Sunday with the sock drawer did not give me a new wardrobe. It gave me a rail where everything opened and everything agreed, and that gave me back the first four minutes of every morning. I had spent a year believing I needed to buy my way out of the closet full of nothing. I needed to decide my way out, in twenty-minute pieces, with a baby on me.

If you want the outfits already laid out so you can copy them onto your own rail, the Year Round Capsule has two hundred of them across the seasons, with three pictures of you in them on the house. If you would rather someone did the whole afternoon with you, from your own clothes, that is Anah inside the Atelier, where the closet is the first thing she learns. And if a top on the rail might or might not pass step two, Will it feed tells you from a photo, free.

Tops this afternoon. Twenty minutes. That is the whole first step. The focus is on you, mama.