Week 2: Clothes

Moving on to another area of great excess in my life: clothes. I have a LOT of clothes. More clothes than can actually fit in my closet, which is silly considering I have something like 15 feet of closet at my disposal.

The problem isn't so much that I buy too much, it's that I have bought too much, and I didn't really know my style and for the longest time I didn't know where to shop. It's safe to say, as I'm knocking on the door of thirty years old with two kids and a real job, I'm beyond the Charlotte Russe years. I can probably get rid of the dress I wore to my Sophomore homecoming, right? Even as I type that, there's a little part of me that's yelling "wrong! I might need it someday! I could wear that again!"

So for this week I'm choosing two thing: Go through everything. Be realistic. I did this a lot before we moved and made some first round cuts thanks to my brutally honest sister. Shamefully, that was over 50 pounds of clothes, but there's still more, like the homecoming dress. Part of this ties into next week’s focus on possessions.

Second, I'm going to set a time limit on how long I have to get dressed this week to 60 seconds, and that includes picking out shoes and accessories. So far, I'm 2 days in. Yesterday was good, today was less good but not terrible. I spend an awful lot of unnecessary time staring at the same clothes. And then changing what I’ve already put on and feel super anxious about all of it. So 60 seconds, and praying my focus shifts away from what I want people to think of me. 

A third and unexpected conviction was the light shed on human rights within the apparel industry. I took a few really interesting classes in college on this, but I've frankly been lazy in this area. I cannot stand the fact that my kids' clothing may have been made by the sweet hands of children forced into labor in deplorable conditions. There are some great companies out there bringing data and light to this (free2work.org is one, although a bit limited).