There comes several times in every girl’s life when she starts feeling painfully sick of all the clothes she owns. This is a time of incredible ennui: everything from the beloved, over-washed Motley Crue t-shirt stolen from an ex-boyfriend to the six-hundred-dollar dress from Saks* feels wrong and distasteful hanging in the closet. This is how your darling Fasian-ista feels right now, and to be truthful, has felt for nearly half a year.
My usual, over-privileged action to combat this ennui is to open up my closet to newcomers: purchase a few choice and/or trendy items to add life to my collection of clothing. However, these are lean times, and I am a Frugal Fasian-ista with very little, if any, discretionary income.
So I am trying to maximize this ennui by scrutinizing what is in my closet, ridding myself of the wannabes, and reinventing the must-keeps.
This is a difficult step. On the one hand, my clothes are all in pretty good condition—I’d like to say this is because I take care of them, but in reality, this is because I have SO much clothing, I barely wear anything enough for it to give out on me. Thus it’s hard to justify getting rid of perfectly good pieces of clothing, particularly when the clutter I feel pouring from my closet could be solved quite easily by, well, a bigger closet. I daydream on the subway about my childhood closet, with its three hanging rods and walk-in capacity.
The pathetic reality of living in Manhattan! In terms of having stuff, it is both a blessing and a curse. It makes it necessary to constantly be purging, and I am now much better at controling what I purchase (I'm one of those girls who used to have 4 types of shampoos and conditioners, 3 body washes, 2 shaving creams, 3 soaps, etc. around her bathtub, and now I only have shampoo, conditioner, soap, shaving cream, exfoliator, and razor) but it also magnifies the amount of stuff there is.
What to do, then? I dutifully try on clothes that I haven’t worn in a bit (confession: there are more than a few pieces of clothing that I haven’t worn in the past nine months, and some I haven’t worn in a year), and manage to dispose of a few that I feel are not flattering enough or just don’t quite fit right. (Un)fortunately, my body has not changed so much in the past six years, and I do not have a closet full of perfectly fine clothes that no longer fit. This does mean, though, that it is harder to get rid of clothing.
For those clothing that I’m unsure about—the ones I haven’t worn in months, but still find hard to part with, I take out for one last hurrah. I will wear it to see how I feel—if I fall back in love with the piece, it goes back in my closet. If I feel ambivalent towards it, it goes into the give-away bag. Where this fails, though, is when I wear my dress/skirt/shirt out and receive compliments on it—which happens 7 times out of 10, not to float my own boat as someone with fantastic taste or anything—because then I feel compelled to hold onto the piece, and we are back to square one: overstuffed closet.
There are two problems at the heart of this: 1). That I feel like I have too much clothing and 2). That the clothing I own is not serving the purposes that I want them to. The first problem seems simply solved: get rid of excess clothing. Particularly if I want to address the second problem, which is more complicated, and would be impossible if I can’t take care of the first one.
My second problem is brought about by the culmination of a few things:
1). I am getting older. And though I may still look like I’m 19 (*rolls eyes at bouncers*), I am not, and whether I actually can get away with the short/bright/frilly clothes or not, I feel like I can’t.
2). My style is changing. This is probably an off-shoot of #1, but of course, the silhouettes you like changes, like everything else.
3). My lifestyle/schedule. Since I’ve been nanny-ing for the past year, I’ve been wearing a lot more t-shirts/jeans/shorts, as opposed to the skirts/dresses that I’m more inclined to wear. It’s a practical move; it is difficult to chase a two-year-old on the jungle gym when you’re wearing a short dress, though I’ve done it, of course. I still prefer to wear dresses and skirts, so I’ve added t-shirts to my wardrobe without getting rid of my dresses and skirts. This means an inflated wardrobe. My practical wardrobe adjustment leads to #4.
4). Day-to-night clothes. One of my major issues about my closet is that only a small percentage can be considered proper day-to-night attire. A lot of my dresses are sundresses—great for daytime wear, but not that hot at a bar at night. In my previous life, I had the luxury of going home before going out—so I could wear day dresses and outfits, go home, and change into more traditional going-out clothing: jeans, lacy camisole, heels, etc. Now, my days are extended. I run around and usually have no time to go home and change, and since I don’t have an office, I can’t bring a change of clothes with me—I’d just be stuck with all the bags when I go out, and I already carry too much around with me.
How to address these problems? Well, this year, I’ve gotten rid of an impressive amount of clothing, but still own a vast amount. And now I have to be fantastically conscientious of the clothing I purchase—that they are classic, flattering, and transition well between day and night. In lieu of spending money and buying more clothes, I am trying to be far more inventive with what exists in my closet—changing up how I wear things. I’m someone who is a secondary accessory person—in other words, I wear accessories as an afterthought. Usually, my clothes are so colorful and patterned that I try to be subdued with accessories. But there is truth that changing accessories can help pull a day outfit into a night outfit. And it is much easier to carry around different earrings and a scarf than it is to carry around a whole other outfit.
My usual, over-privileged action to combat this ennui is to open up my closet to newcomers: purchase a few choice and/or trendy items to add life to my collection of clothing. However, these are lean times, and I am a Frugal Fasian-ista with very little, if any, discretionary income.
So I am trying to maximize this ennui by scrutinizing what is in my closet, ridding myself of the wannabes, and reinventing the must-keeps.
This is a difficult step. On the one hand, my clothes are all in pretty good condition—I’d like to say this is because I take care of them, but in reality, this is because I have SO much clothing, I barely wear anything enough for it to give out on me. Thus it’s hard to justify getting rid of perfectly good pieces of clothing, particularly when the clutter I feel pouring from my closet could be solved quite easily by, well, a bigger closet. I daydream on the subway about my childhood closet, with its three hanging rods and walk-in capacity.
The pathetic reality of living in Manhattan! In terms of having stuff, it is both a blessing and a curse. It makes it necessary to constantly be purging, and I am now much better at controling what I purchase (I'm one of those girls who used to have 4 types of shampoos and conditioners, 3 body washes, 2 shaving creams, 3 soaps, etc. around her bathtub, and now I only have shampoo, conditioner, soap, shaving cream, exfoliator, and razor) but it also magnifies the amount of stuff there is.
What to do, then? I dutifully try on clothes that I haven’t worn in a bit (confession: there are more than a few pieces of clothing that I haven’t worn in the past nine months, and some I haven’t worn in a year), and manage to dispose of a few that I feel are not flattering enough or just don’t quite fit right. (Un)fortunately, my body has not changed so much in the past six years, and I do not have a closet full of perfectly fine clothes that no longer fit. This does mean, though, that it is harder to get rid of clothing.
For those clothing that I’m unsure about—the ones I haven’t worn in months, but still find hard to part with, I take out for one last hurrah. I will wear it to see how I feel—if I fall back in love with the piece, it goes back in my closet. If I feel ambivalent towards it, it goes into the give-away bag. Where this fails, though, is when I wear my dress/skirt/shirt out and receive compliments on it—which happens 7 times out of 10, not to float my own boat as someone with fantastic taste or anything—because then I feel compelled to hold onto the piece, and we are back to square one: overstuffed closet.
There are two problems at the heart of this: 1). That I feel like I have too much clothing and 2). That the clothing I own is not serving the purposes that I want them to. The first problem seems simply solved: get rid of excess clothing. Particularly if I want to address the second problem, which is more complicated, and would be impossible if I can’t take care of the first one.
My second problem is brought about by the culmination of a few things:
1). I am getting older. And though I may still look like I’m 19 (*rolls eyes at bouncers*), I am not, and whether I actually can get away with the short/bright/frilly clothes or not, I feel like I can’t.
2). My style is changing. This is probably an off-shoot of #1, but of course, the silhouettes you like changes, like everything else.
3). My lifestyle/schedule. Since I’ve been nanny-ing for the past year, I’ve been wearing a lot more t-shirts/jeans/shorts, as opposed to the skirts/dresses that I’m more inclined to wear. It’s a practical move; it is difficult to chase a two-year-old on the jungle gym when you’re wearing a short dress, though I’ve done it, of course. I still prefer to wear dresses and skirts, so I’ve added t-shirts to my wardrobe without getting rid of my dresses and skirts. This means an inflated wardrobe. My practical wardrobe adjustment leads to #4.
4). Day-to-night clothes. One of my major issues about my closet is that only a small percentage can be considered proper day-to-night attire. A lot of my dresses are sundresses—great for daytime wear, but not that hot at a bar at night. In my previous life, I had the luxury of going home before going out—so I could wear day dresses and outfits, go home, and change into more traditional going-out clothing: jeans, lacy camisole, heels, etc. Now, my days are extended. I run around and usually have no time to go home and change, and since I don’t have an office, I can’t bring a change of clothes with me—I’d just be stuck with all the bags when I go out, and I already carry too much around with me.
How to address these problems? Well, this year, I’ve gotten rid of an impressive amount of clothing, but still own a vast amount. And now I have to be fantastically conscientious of the clothing I purchase—that they are classic, flattering, and transition well between day and night. In lieu of spending money and buying more clothes, I am trying to be far more inventive with what exists in my closet—changing up how I wear things. I’m someone who is a secondary accessory person—in other words, I wear accessories as an afterthought. Usually, my clothes are so colorful and patterned that I try to be subdued with accessories. But there is truth that changing accessories can help pull a day outfit into a night outfit. And it is much easier to carry around different earrings and a scarf than it is to carry around a whole other outfit.
I feel a sense of accomplishment when I fill up bags with clothes to donate. I feel a mild sense of despair when I realize I still have a full closet of clothes, even after filling up the bags. More often than not, the bags of clothes sit in a corner of my apartment for weeks, if not months, waiting for me to muster the energy and motivation to drag them to Goodwill, or Housing Works, or Buffalo Exchange to donate or sell. In those weeks and months, I don’t miss the clothes that are in the bag at all. That should be the best sign that I don’t need those clothes. If you do what I do, be warned: never look through the bag before you take it out—you risk feeling clothing-disposer’s remorse.So here’s to combating clothing ennui, paring down my closet, and clarifying my style. It’s a continual work in progress.*The Fasian-ista is not saying she has either of these two pieces of clothing, but will admit to a variation of both.
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