Maybe a fashion stylist would tell you differently, or a saleswoman in Bloomingdale’s china department, but if you’re asking me, I’ll tell you: I don’t give a hoot about splitting up sets and I don’t think you should, either.

So often when I’m sorting through things with clients we’ll come across items that belong to a set–pajamas, dishes, knives, bedding, luggage, the list of stuff sold in groupings goes on.

Inevitably my clients are all, “I have to keep this because it belongs to a set I have.”

To which of course I respond, “Oh yeah? Says who?”

If you own a set of lacy, silk loungewear, and have only ever worn the camisole, while the matching extra-cheeky shorts have incurred fold lines like volcanic crevices from lack of wear…

you should keep the top and ditch the buttoms.

If you have a set of pots and pans you absolutely adore, save for that one neglected extra large monstrosity that sits forlornly at the very back of the cupboard, which may or may not still have original packaging remnants circa a decade ago, and which merely serves to remind you of the soup you never make…

go ahead and donate that big guy and keep the rest of the collection.

If you have a household’s worth of linens, and your bunch has some religious aversion to flat sheets…

no sense holding onto them just for the sake of keeping the sets intact.

Are you getting the message?

There is no law governing this “set” business. No store employee will make no house visits in the future in order to monitor your management of things his store sold you in a bunch.

Furthermore, I’ll bet 9.75 times out of ten that very item you bought in a set was also sold–by the same retailer no less–as singles! The set was just a different purchasing option. That they came together doesn’t mean they have to stay together.

As long as an item is functional solo (no one wants your loner earring) you can, in good faith, pass it along to someone more in need of it than you.

Guess what? The person who really needs a pot–any pot–is not going to protest when they acquire one. They won’t make a stink about it being the runt of the litter, won’t refuse it on the basis that it doesn’t have matching compatriots. They’re going to be like, “Oh my gosh, a pot! This world; it’s great!” And such.

So saith me.