Welcome Back Leather Skirt.

I Missed You.

The irony behind this Manic Monday outfit is that I haven’t worn my black knee-length leather skirt in 2 years and the pink velour blazer was on my give-away pile and Jennifer told me I had to keep it! The zipper doesn’t work very well and her no-brainer suggestion was to just not use the zipper! DUH!

Lesson learned to date with my wardrobe styling adventure is that we all have a ton of stuff in our closets that have great life and style left in them. But you need to find them first!

What I did when she left…

• The big count. You can see that I did the official count in my journal with a sharpie and you can also see that I didn’t make 100. I am proudly at 136 items in my Winter/Spring closet.
• Separated my lives.  I moved my work clothes to the top rack and play clothes to the bottom rack and separated all of my work pants, play pants, etc.

Help Arrived!

I have done a lot of closet purging on my own and I had reached a point where I couldn’t do anymore. In one of my posts, I talked about knowing when you need help and I was at this point. I met Jennifer N. at an event months ago when she was just kicking off her wardrobe styling and consultation business called It’s So U. I was super impressed by her business model – but at that time, I wasn’t living this glorious simple life!

I called her and made an appointment for a wardrobe styling appointment. All I can say is that it was fabulous!

What she did:

• She combed through all of my clothes – both winter/fall and summer/spring.
• She was very nonchalant and relaxed – she held things up, asked me to try on things, looked at the materials of the clothing and their condition (i.e. wrinkled mess or not, etc.).
• She knew I had already pared down but that I wanted to pare down MORE – my goal is 100 items in my closet. So when it came to black pants, jeans and jackets – she would say things like “I don’t think you will miss this” or “I think you can do without this”.
• We made a big hallway pile and at the end of the visit she asked for garbage bag and took the pile with her. This was the funny part – as I had half way thought I may go through this pile a second time to make sure I wanted to get rid of all of this stuff, but she made this exercise an easy one. Literally – the pile disappeared and she will come back next week with a donation slip!
• Talk about an emotional release – no second guessing! The pile was GONE!

Look out for Part 2, 3 and onwards!

There was an era when I liked tea…boy is that era over!

My Mom was in town for a week and we made a few more dents in the kitchen. We even got to the cabinet that we never-ever  open as there is nothing useful in the cabinet and when you open it, crap falls out. It is amazing and embarrassing to acknowledge how easy it is to go through your stuff and quickly organize it.  It comes down to pure initiative. I am first to say that I have a lot of initiative; just not in this compartment of my life!

How do you get initiative for things you hate doing?

In my case, it has worked like this:

• You need goals that stare you in the face every day. Seriously, without a goal — why even think about making change happen in your life.
• You need accountability. It could be a friend, a blog, a dog, a partner, a spouse. Basically you need to do whatever it takes to feel some degree of obligation. In my case, writing makes me happy. Is blogging a smart use of my time? Likely not. My Main Squeeze reminds me that if I invested my blogging time into sorting and cleaning, I may not have as big of a problem. Men and their logical minds.
• You may need intervention. If you can’t do it yourself — get help. I am specifically waiting for Little-Sister-Intervention to go through my closet and identify my 100 items. It is clearly a task that I can’t do on my own. 

So, I donated the tea and re-donated the espresso machine to the same thrift store that I bought it. The take away here is that some day when I decide to drink tea again I will have to go and buy some. Win some – lose some, I guess.  

My endeavor this year doesn’t just include sorting and ridding, but also no buying. As a self-prescribed thrift-a-holic and life-long believer in the concept of retail therapy, I feel this is like a binge eater not binging or an alcoholic giving the bottle up. Fortunately, I just had to start a blog and didn’t go through any fancy detox program and I am feeling rather blissful.

When I searched ‘bliss’ on Google I got 40+ landscape scenes that were inspired by Microsoft — so I searched lavender instead.

27 days into this adventure, I am feeling an incredible relief. Weird. It is the relief of knowing you can’t do something. Shopping for ‘stuff’ isn’t an option. Making a decision on ’what to buy’ or ‘how much of it’  doesn’t dominate any more minutes of my life. I don’t look at the sales racks. I pass up fabulous things that I would have bought and don’t think twice.

27 days…338 to go!

Change is good.

It is amazing what a FREE blog can do for my budget.

I have a feeling that I could easily fall into love with shopping again — but perhaps after 365 days, I will have to ease into it slowly.

A few tid-bits of council from a myriad of sources:

• Only have seasonally appropriate clothes within view in your closet. Move non-seasonal stuff to a bin or another rack in the basement, or in the back of your closet.
• Only have things you like AND look good wearing within view in your closet. I really like this one….as some of my favorite outfits don’t look good on me. Not sure how I am going to deal with this one – likely a Sister-Intervention-Opportunity!
• Some of us need more variety than others. When my Main Squeeze helped me with the math above, he laughed – as he said if I didn’t have variety in my life, I would die. I had to agree. My initial thoughts about wearing a uniform have officially been squelched. Dammit. Win some, lose some, I guess!

Okay, so like I have mentioned in previous posts, I need high-usage spaces to feel right. I am a firm believer that putzing around in your house and moving stuff around so that it feels right, makes a difference. Call it silly. Call it a waste of time…but it works for this kooky girl.

SO MY NEW CLOSET DIDN’T FEEL RIGHT!

CR, SFC and I all worked on this “Women at Work” collaged door. I got this great book from GiveWhatYouGot book sale. I didn’t necessarily ask for help, but what kid doesn’t love cutting and gluing on doors in your house! I had immediate helpers. We had glue to clean up all over the floor and every time CR got a speck on his clothes he wanted to change them.

These black and white pictures are priceless. There are women hanging from telephone poles, playboy bunnies, teachers, lyric writers, business women, homemakers and scientists. It is a wonderful inspiration every time I open the door. I honestly feel like I am opening a door to opportunity every morning.

Cheers to putzing and creating when putzing and creating makes a difference.

So, I have asked 7+ people: How many clothes does a person need per season to be comfortable and to have adequate variety? My question is falling on deaf ears. People change the subject and stutter a little…but no one has answered my question. And I don’t care about the answer enough to do a survey or Facebook post.

I have added the seasonal clause as I realize that some of us live in extreme climates – where we are wearing tanks and wool cardigans and everything in between.

The pure math for those of us that work outside of our home and are required to look quasi-professional or at least not wearing sweats or jammy pants is pretty simple.

We only have 365 days or 52 weeks in a year. I really don’t love math, but here is a GO at the number of days you need to look like you are employ-able vs. the days you can look like a bohemian.

• 103 weekend days
• 261 possible work days
• Assuming we have 20 days of vacation between normal vacations and National holidays
• This leaves 241 WORK DAYS
• And 124 PLAY DAYS
• 241 WORK DAYS + 124 PLAY DAYS = 365 days

I started making some mathematical assumptions — like how many times you do wash, and how many times you want to re-wear the same clothes and then I got tired of all of the possible derivations there could be. And then there are the differences in how much variety we need for survival on this planet earth.

My husband got a good giggle as he things my DNA spells variety and change and if I take that away from myself with this silly challenge, I could shrivel up and apparently not be a good wife, mother or human. So, he helped me make some realistic goals ignoring how many times we do laundry as hell, who knows the answer to that.

We estimated that for a good amount of variety….

WORK CLOTHES

• Pants / Skirts: 16
• Shirts: 16
• Dresses: 4
• Shoes: 4

PLAY CLOTHES

• Jeans: 6
• Exercise/Jammy Pants: 5
• Shirts: 25
• Shoes: 4  

So this is 80 pieces of clothing per season. And because this is my own personal challenge I can make my own rules in/around accessories. Henceforth, I don’t have a limit on the accessories.

Stay tuned for the big count and other closet adventures…..

Before!

It was part of my plan to swap closets with my Main Squeeze. On a random week day night we made a go at this. Yes, I officially kicked myself out of the narrow, but more spacious master closet and am moving into our family ‘clothes’ room.

A few thoughts about this swap:

• I can’t be a slob in the same room that I demand from the kids and their belongings.
• Secondly, I have less space so I will be forced to get reorganized.
• Lastly, change is always good when you are in a rut.

You can see a few random picture of the swap and some of the piles that were there before and then the large leaf bag full of clothes that were donated to the thrift store after!

I already feel relieved that our room is pile-free. I still need to sex-up my closet area a little though.

I have learned that look, feel and color are very important to my soul. If things don’t feel right, I will have 101 reasons why I can’t function. Hence the reason my office at work has a circus-like spirit. Productivity requires a special touch in my world.

Very normal looking pile!

 

A glimpse at my new pre-sorted world!

When you like a color or a style — I have been known to have more than one. These all serve a different purpose, well kinda-sorta.  And I haven’t been a significant amount for any of them. In fact two of them I didn’t pay for; got one via a  Book Club Clothes Barter and the other from my sister who picked it up at a thrift store.

A key challenge in this Living Mo’ Simple strategy is not necessarily seeing how much you can buy for cheap or get for cheap — but having enough to make you happy and sane.

I will write another post or two on my closet-strategy…as there are more conundrum’s to come!