liberation

As I was standing in front of my 3 closets trying to figure out what to pack for CA a few mornings ago, I realized I hate my clothes. 1/3 of my wardrobe is "work" clothes. That third I actually like but can never wear these days and haven't worn in almost 4 years. I keep them because they are beautiful Ann Taylor suits and pants, Ralph Lauren skirts and perfectly tailored shirts and one day, I might have to go to a funeral or back to work, and then I will wear them again. Another 1/3 of my wardrobe is my "uniform" which consists of my every day clothes. These are the most boring clothes known to man: 8 long sleeved T-shirts, 12 "Old Navy Standard" tank tops that the color is quickly fading from, a few stretched out sweaters, 8 pairs of jeans that are either too small or too big and 4 pairs of capris... the only thing good about those things is that you only have to shave your legs to your calf. The other 1/3 of my wardrobe is from high school. These things were in style 8-10 years ago. And what an unfortunate style it was.

I'm not sure you could even classify them in a "style". 10 years ago was the pre-Britney/ Christina era, when baby-doll tees were hot and you wore them with flared (yuck!) jeans. But then, 2 years later, shirts were super short and pants were super low and that was HOT! It didn't matter if your stomach was too big and stuck out showing some nasty skin. If you wanted to be like the cool girls, that is what you wore. Even if you didn't want to wear this type of clothing, you didn't have a choice because that is all that was sold, unless you shopped in your mom's clothing section, and we all know that's just not an option for a 17 year old.

I don't know why I never got rid of these clothes. I never liked wearing them but I boxed them up and moved with them at least 12 times over the past 8 years. All of the movers have always laughed about the amount of clothing I have. I tried justifying it by telling them that everything I owned was always hung up because I was too poor to own a dresser so it just looked like I had a bunch of clothes.

So a few days ago, after my revelation that I hate my wardrobe, I decided to try on some of my old clothes, just to see if I would ever wear them again. After putting on 4 shirts, and laughing so hard I almost fell over, I decided it was time to pitch em. I would donate them and let someone who actually might look good in these things wear them. Honestly, though, I'm not sure anyone could look good in these.

Five garbage bags full later... my closet and my mind have been liberated. Gone are the things I don't wear and I'm ready to welcome some clothes from this century into my life. Shopping spree, here I come! Maybe I'll even branch out and get something different than my uniform of long sleeved shirts and tank tops. The angels may sing if I do that. Now that I have room for new clothes, I won't feel bad because I won't have to move my husband's clothes to the third floor closets each time I bring home something new and maybe I can even bring some of his stuff back to our closet. Funny thing is that I'm not sure he's ever noticed that I moved some of his stuff upstairs.

Edited to add my cousin's hilarious response via email:

"...Personally, I think that you should have kept some of those clothes so you could put them on and pretend you still live in a Federline-free world."

And I couldn't agree with her more. Those were the good days. Poor Brit Brit. K-fed sucks and ruined everything! But I will save that for another blog post. Thanks for making me laugh, Em.