The rain's blown through at last and brought us the edge of the weather people all around us have been having: no snow, just a brilliant frost when I went out with Dora first thing this morning. It's good to see the sun in the morning.
Our houseguest, a friend of my husband's from his long-ago graduate-student days in Germany, blew in with the change in the weather and out again before I was up this morning. Now we have plumbers, because both our downstairs bathroom sink and the upstairs bathtub drains are clogged beyond my husband's ability to un-clog them. Dora is hurling imprecations at the plumbers from her crate, in between bouts of high-value treats (today, cheese popcorn) for counter-conditioning. The idea is that over time she will come to associate strange people in the house with good experiences, not fear, but it all gets a little overwhelming now. She spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening crated, too, since we had the houseguest –– and thank goodness for crates. I could wish that we had the crate in some part of the house where she wouldn't hear strange voices and footsteps, but honestly, I don't think there's any place in this house that's quite that remote. At least she can be contained in her safe place, although from that safe place she certainly makes known her displeasure at the presence of strangers.
Wearing today: Much Wool.
I've repeated my Sierra from yesterday, with my secondhand long-sleeved navy merino base-layer tee underneath, and this gray-blue thrifted pullover on top. Again, there's no tag in the sweater to tell me what the fiber content is, but it feels like a lot of wool. Merino Snag tights, thrifted Birk Madeiras. I am and intend to be some kind of warm today.
It's good to have a real reason to wear this seriously warm sweater, which I like very much. Having one of those morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age moments, from that weirdest of songs, "Maggie May," but anyway. I love this grayed blue. And it's good to remember that dresses can repurpose as skirts –– all you need is to pop something on over them. And it's fun that the same dress can appear in such different registers: yesterday's striped leggings and brighter blue under-layer struck a note of vibrancy, while today's grays and blues are more muted, with minimal contrast. Even my earrings –– also thrifted –– play into that in a way that I like.
Meanwhile, again, I'm warm in the drafty house, and when I go outside with Dora, I'll throw on my puffer jacket and be even warmer. One of my instinctive resolutions for this year is to spend far more time outside –– a resolution already enacted daily by the fact of the dog, with whom I go outside and stay for a good twenty minutes at least, four or five times from the time I get up until I go to bed. I've come to love being outside last thing at night, watching the sky while Dora noses around in the grass. Even in the middle of town, with a lot of light pollution, I can see enough stars to enchant me, even when I'm tired and want to be tucked up with my book. Being outside first thing in the morning, too –– today with the frost shining on everything –– is a good thing, and I'm glad to have a solid reason to be there, that isn't contingent on my own willpower.
On Day 4 of my no-buy year, yet another of my final 2021 clothing purchases has shown up: a vintage 1990s April Cornell maxi skirt in a pretty cornflower-blue floral pattern. It's not quite the fabric I was envisioning –– more of a crepe georgette texture than the soft rayon I had expected, but I think it will still be a useful, wearable piece. I like having a selection of longer skirts to wear, especially as most of my dresses are above-the-knee, and the colors and general flow of this one will work with many things I already have. It should look good with my Camellia as a tunic, with either of my blue bamboo swing dresses as tunics, and potentially with all my merino tees except the pink-striped one, which I'm still waiting for. I haven't tried it on yet –– it's a large and looks gigantic, although it has a drawstring waist. But assuming it fits, I think it's a decent and usable addition.
Today I pulled my last pair of jeans out of the closet and added them to the outbox. I have loved them, but it's no good even pretending that they're going to fit comfortably anymore. The body I currently have is not the body that looked and felt good in those jeans. So out they go.
All this culling still leaves me with plenty of clothes. I don't want to winnow too much more just now, because I have a feeling I'm going to desire some variety as time goes on. I have, I think, five skirts now? four patterned and one sage-green solid. I have nine? dresses: two wool, four bamboo, two linen, one cotton knit –– plus two cotton dresses that I'm currently wearing as nightgowns, but could re-add to my stock of dresses. That's a lot of dresses, I guess, but I don't pretend to be a minimalist. I have one pair of actual trousers, plus some joggers that I'm not sure I'm going to wear, plus a lot of leggings, which I wear as tights, really, not pants. I'm honestly not sure how many tops I currently own. That's where most of my hardest culling has been happening, but I still have a good many, plus one more merino tee on the way. I'm hanging onto more than I probably strictly need for now, though, because this no-buy challenge will tell me which ones, of the tops I think I might wear, I really do wear.
Well, on to the work of the day.
ALSO:
Another style account that doesn't gel at all with my own personal aesthetic (she and I would probably never in a million years wear the same clothes), but which offers some solid advice for getting a handle on what you own and wear. I especially appreciate the "Pro Tips" slide in this particular post. The emphasis here is on finding a method of inventorying what you own and how you wear it, to help you identify patterns: purchasing patterns, patterns of wear or non-wear. I also like her idea of devising a rating scale for ordering what you wear most, less often, least often, never.
To a great extent, for me, this blog serves that purpose (thank goodness for labels, which help me wade through posts to find what I'm looking for). Though I like spreadsheets, I think I might drive myself off the edge trying to devise a spreadsheet system for my clothes. I could see itemizing everything, though, and ticking off every time I wear something.
Like this, with dates. I have a feeling I've left many things out, though –– I was listing items from memory. It all seems like an awful lot, even after significant culling. I do still need to cull my shoes. Quite a pile there at the bottom of the closet. Anyway, I'm glad I can insert new rows as I remember what I actually have. (Again, it feels like a lot to me, but then I have friends who have closets the size of actual rooms, and those closets are full of clothes . . . so what I have feels like a lot to ME, but I'm not sure it really is, objectively, a whole huge lot of clothes).
Of course, this year I hope I won't really create or perpetuate purchasing patterns, though one knock-on effect of not buying clothes might be to see more clearly what my purchasing patterns have been. What I chiefly want to pay attention to is how I wear what I have –– what do I really reach for? What am I never going to reach for? How do I feel in the things I do reach for? Presumably the answers are going to be things like comfortable and confident –– but why? I hope those answers will be illuminating and useful to me in discerning, in the future, what to buy and when to buy it.
But I also hope those answers will help me in creating, day to day, outfits that feel so good that I don't have to dwell on them. That's the idea, paradoxical as it is: obviously I'm going to have clothes on, and other people are going to register that I have clothes on. But my own self-consciousness shouldn't call attention to them. The idea is for the clothes to be like my skin: there, and right, but not something I have to think about, and neither does anyone else. Vanishing clothes –– not literally vanishing, as in the emperor has no, but vanishing in anyone's field of attention, including mine.