Cash in the closet: how much could a wardrobe clearout raise?

There are 2.7bn worth of unworn garments in Britain's wardrobes. One writer calculates how much the items she rarely wears could raise for charity

Wake up. Remove dog from head. Ponder 100+ items of clothing in drawers so overstuffed they no longer close properly. Feel defeated by this cluttered life. Then rub face against vintage silk kimono, purchased on impulse in a charity shop on Orkney. Perk up. Put on same jeans as day before but with different top. Done.

This is my morning routine, and according to research by Marks & Spencer and Oxfam, I'm not the only one building up a collection of clothes I will never put on. The research, which polled 2,000 wardrobes for the "Shwopping" campaign to recycle clothes for charity, found 2.7bn worth of unworn items stored throughout Britain. All those stacks of identical Gap jeans are eating into our time, too: women spend an average of 17 minutes each morning, or four days a year, deciding what to wear (for men it's 13 minutes).