Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Clothing Challenged

So on Monday I woke up with the Monday blues.  I didn't feel like doing anything.  Until I opened up the door to my storage room-- wow.  Talk about a mess.  Talk about a lot of useless stuff that we don't need.  I got busy, I managed to awkwardly drag out a few boxes, started reorganizing the kids clothes and set aside some stuff to sell.  Then I thought about the guest room closet-- It's my second closet.  I don't have enough room for all of my clothes in our bedroom closet so I use the downstairs one for the overflow.  Both are full-- way too full.  I was inspired.  The goal of the day-- go from two closets to one.  I was ruthless as I began the purge... and 2 hours later I was finished.  Then I started posting things on craigslist and 24 hours later I had made $175 bucks (and still have a few more sales pending).  I did sell a few other household things and kids items-- but most of it was from my clothes.

As I was cleaning things out-- feeling a little disgusted with myself at the size of my wardrobe-- I realized that I've had quite a few clothing challenges to deal with over the past 5 years.  Let me share some of them with you:

  • Having babies.  Need I say more?  Really, over the past 5 years I have been a size 10, a size 2, and every size in between.
  • I've needed clothes for every season-- rainy weather, cold weather, hot weather... the list goes on.
  • I've been a working mom-- with an office job that requires you to dress professionally.  And because I've been every size imaginable (and pregnant-- twice) this means I have a ridiculous amount of dress pants and skirts.  It's crazy.
  • I've been a nursing mom.  TMI?  Too late now!
  • I now cannot wear sleeveless tops and dresses, or even T-shirts with short sleeves, due to my shoulder injury.  I cannot even begin to tell you how difficult it is to shop for summer clothing with this to keep in mind... although I am getting more skillful in this area.
  • Lastly-- this is a big one-- I have a very real fear of becoming prematurely geriatric.
As you can see... shopping is serious business for me.  Sure doesn't help that I'm pretty cheap too :)

But after my latest clothing purge I have new rules.  The clothes I buy need to be multi-functional, non-geriatric, comfortable, have long-ish sleeves, and be good value, not just cheap.  So, with that said, let me show you the best purchase of the summer.  This shirt has long-ish sleeves, it's uber comfortable, the lightweight fabric makes it nice and cool for summer (hard to find in a shirt with sleeves!), it's not geriatric, it sneakily hides the after-effects of pregnancy, it can be casual (like when I'm wearing my summer staple-- cutoffs) and dressed up with cute jeans-- and it was good value-- Target for $19.99. 



And that my friends, was my first (possibly my last) fashion related post.
Hope you enjoyed it.

5 comments:

Trev and Rebekah said...

Love the shirt. So did you try on all those clothes in those 2 hours? I look forward to one day being done having kids so I can get rid of all the maternity clothes and clothes that are too big for me now. Maybe before we move you can help me purge some??

Lindsay said...

Such a cute shirt! I wish I was around when you were purging your clothes :)

Bonnie said...

I too eyed up this shirt at Target on Monday. Now I'm kinda wishing I had bought it :) Its looks SUPER cute on you! Love it! You're so darn beautiful. :)

flowers2boys said...

too funny... i have the same project going on in my closet(s), totes, wardrobe... it is embarrassing how much clothing one person can aquire... but i cannot seem to part with anything when the smaller size is where I wish to be!
Cute shirt!(it would look great with skinny jeans & boots, and a cardie for fall&winter)

Team AC said...

Love the shirt, Elissa... I'll have to check Target here in Australia to see if they have anything cute like that here too. Although it's "winter" here, so maybe not yet. But it's still about 25 degrees every afternoon, so maybe they will. Who knows. I shall report back to you!

Nice work on the closet by the way! Check out the Zero Waste Blog (google it) and see what she has... she limits herself to 7 tops, 5 pants, 7 shoes, etc TOTAL... pretty crazy!

~Corinna