wardrobe – Annienygma

Maintaining Balance

Back to school season is always a bit hectic around here. A local church hosts a free yard sale that is packed with donations and yard sale discards that would normally end up in the trash while the local clothing closet has a yard sale where you can purchase bags filled with the clothing of your choice for a dollar apiece.

Along with that we have to go to school registration day and make the trip to WalMart for Katie’s and Donavon’s (my grandson’s) school supplies.

Each of these acquisition trips are accompanied with purging. When new clothes come in, old clothes go out. The ones that have been worn into rags are discarded while the items that are in good shape are bagged up and donated to the local clothing closet for them to either distribute among those who need clothing or to sell during their bag sales.

This is one way that we maintain balance in our lives. Since our space is limited, we refuse to allow our possessions to grow beyond what our house can comfortably handle.

What do you do to maintain balance?

Corraling the Closet

I did it: I managed to reduce the amount of clothing I possess to just enough to be contained in a single side of the closet!

Hooray! No more clothes hangers draped off of the shelves!

I turned the hangers around backwards to better determine what I actually wear and what I don’t of the remaining clothing. By this time next year (I don’t store out-of season clothing–it must all fit in the closet) I will know what I have used and what I have not. What I have not is leaving, period.

The only things that I do not currently hang in the closet are pants, shorts and coats. I hope to thin down my wardrobe where I can hang even these items there to simplify my clothing storage needs.

My sister is getting first crack at the closet gleanings before they get shipped to Auntie’s house for distribution among family and friends. I’m not sure how much she will keep out of the pile.

Oh, yes–and I lost a pair of shoes today. My cheap generic Crocs–the ones I slummed around the house in. After three(?) years of heavy use they finally died. Not bad for a $4 pair of shoes, especially considering the abuse I put them through! Now I debate whether or not to replace them. Since warm weather will be here soon I am thinking that I can make do with the sandals that I have though none of them will work with socks. Those things were horribly ugly, but so handy, comfortable and inexpensive!

I also have the dressier clogs I purchased the other day, but the heel is a bit on the high side for tromping around the house and yard… Time to dig through my box of shoes to see how to make-do….

Shoes

This morning I opened my shoebox looking for something different to wear besides the crocs I’ve trooped around in all summer.

Within the box I found four pair of dress shoes, a pair of hightop sneakers, some croc clogs for winter, a flipflop missing it’s mate and an old pair of sandals that were still sound but had definitely seen better days.

My first thought was that I needed to watch the summer clearance racks for another pair of shoes until it hit me – how many shoes does one person need? Considering the fact that you can only wear one pair at a time, my current collection seems a bit much already!

In the end I continued to wear the crocs, and pledged to see if I could make the old sandals look a touch better. Why should I purchase more shoes when I don’t hardly wear what I have?

Oh, yes. I tossed the lone flipflop.