New month, same closet, more or less. I am continuing to cull items gradually, though off the top of my head I can't think of anything I've jettisoned lately, other than one pair of joggers that (I have had to concede) don't fit anymore. I continue to be made happy by the very sight of this color palette, which I think is a good sign.
This palette of clothing includes both items I wear all the time, and items I wear less frequently, and that seems like a good thing to me. I just don't reach for it seems –– to me, anyway –– like a possibly unreliable measure for deciding to get rid of clothing, though a lot depends on why you don't reach for it. If you don't reach for it because it doesn't fit, isn't a good color, or just bugs you when you put it on (like jeans that spontaneously unzip themselves every time you move), then that's a valid reason to move it along. If you don't reach for it –– right now –– because there are simply other things you're enjoying more, then I'd say wait.
I've seen a lot of buy/sell/trade posts that begin with a declaration that the current owner really loves the thing being posted for sale. The problem is that she just isn't reaching for it. Nothing wrong's with the fit, the color, the construction. Really, the owner loves it. It's just not an item the owner reaches for all the time, and for that reason the owner, perhaps feeling compelled to be a minimalist, feels uncomfortable owning it.
And, I mean, fair enough, I guess. At the same time, I find that I actively like having some things I don't reach for constantly, but still love. I do go through phases of wearing the same little rota of items over and over. Just look at how many times in January I've worn my Sierra dress, as opposed to virtually any other dress I own. Look at all the dresses I own that I didn't reach for at all in January. What meaning can I extrapolate from this pattern? One possible answer is that I could go, I don't wear those dresses! That's wrong! Somebody else should have them! Another possible answer: It's January.
Years of homeschooling taught me that at some point you're going to have to make big decisions about curriculum and method, but the time to make those decisions is not January. Or February, either, for that matter. Everybody has an existential homeschooling crisis in January and February, when everything you've done, maybe with your entire life but certainly with that school year, seems like nothing but futility and wind. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. That's the one message your brain locks in on in the winter months after Christmas. And you have to ignore it. It's a Desolation. Yes, yes, maybe you're going to need to make some changes, but if you can't see clearly, past your own feelings of futility and ennui, then you won't make positive changes. It's better to sit back and do nothing, as in take an extended winter break if you have to, than to decide that you're going to change your entire educational paradigm in January or February.
Really the same principle applies to all levels of decision: don't make decisions in the moment, if you can possibly avoid it, and don't make decisions when something has amped up your emotions in some negative way. Don't make decisions based on feelings of guilt or failure: I'm a terrible educator, I'm a failure as a mother, I'm a bad person for having too many clothes or the wrong kind of clothes or . . .
Just don't. Put your fingers in your ears and sing la-la-la at the top of your lungs until you can't hear the message, whatever it is, anymore. Or better yet, think of something actually true to tell yourself.
*Remember three good things that have happened this school year.
*Remind yourself of the last loving thing you did for your children.
*Remind yourself that you can't possibly wear an entire closet of clothing all at once and are going to need at least a year before you decide you really don't wear something, if you can't articulate why you're not choosing to wear it right this minute.
In other words, look for Consolations. It ought to be obvious that that's not lying to yourself. Consolations are the word of the Holy Spirit: the opposite of lies, the antithesis of the empty pep talk. They are truths that the Father of Lies would prefer we not remember, because we're really manipulable when we feel bad.
Anyway. Clothes. I don't, as it happens, feel bad about having this closet full of clothes. For one thing, it's not a big closet to begin with. For another thing, it's January. Right now I'm wearing things that feel really good in cold weather. I'm not reaching for that peachy-pink linen 1990s maxi dress because it does not feel that good in cold weather. It's also not a great everyday choice for somebody whose dog likes to walk all over her lap in the course of calming down. I can see wearing it to church with a sweater and boots, but right now that's about it. Actually, even last summer I didn't wear it as an everyday dress, because it's sort of sheer and needs a slip underneath, and it also just feels kind of dressy. It's a great Sunday dress. As much as I gravitate toward versatile dresses for all occasions, it's nice to have an actual Sunday dress or two. That's just not something I feel bad about. While I don't want to keep things I never wear, I think it's fine to have things I don't wear that often –- but that occasionally are exactly what I want. And as much as I like all-season clothes, it's nice to have a few things that I associate particularly with a specific season. I might wear the long linen dress in winter, but even then, its mood is springlike, and I think of it as a breath-of-spring dress. It was my Easter dress last year; it might very well be my Easter dress again this year. I like that right now it's hanging in the closet not really demanding to be worn. Its time might not be now, but that time will come.
Of course February is when I start to feel like spring. As I've said before, winter-into-spring is to me the most delicious of transitions, with all its stark juxtapositions: daffodils blowing in the freezing cold are the brightest, most heart-rending flowers of the entire year. Or forsythia. I feel the same way about blooming forsythia. It'll be interesting to see, going into this month, how the clothes I reach for might reflect my love for this transitional time.
Wearing today, in anticipation of Lent, I guess, though that's still a month and a day away:
My secondhand Pact grape cotton sheath dress, over a bamboo full slip for extra warmth, with an old thrifted Loft ramie tie-waist cardigan, secondhand cotton/bamboo blend marbled tights, and Doc Martens over (unseen) Boody bamboo socks.
I'd thought I might not keep this dress, but I do keep reaching for it. I've determined that it needs some waist definition to make it work: a belt, a knotted shirt, or as here, a cardigan that ties at the waist. But I continue to love the color and the fabric, so it's continued to be a keeper.
It's been a while since I wore this cardigan. In fact, it's been in and out of the outbox a couple of times in the last year –– so far I've always rescued it and kept it. Dark brown is not that great a color for me, though on the other hand, my hair is brown, and it goes well with the rest of me. My skin tone is pink, and pinks and browns combine well. Browns go well with lots of colors that look good on me, chiefly pinks, grapey purples, and blues.
So I've hung onto my two brown cardigans, which I like in every other respect. This one I like for the cabled and ribbed details, as well as for the tie, which gives a 1940s vintage feel to any outfit I wear it with. Here, too, it gives some needed definition to the shapeless dress.
So here again is an example of an item I don't reach for all the time, but am really glad I haven't gotten rid of. Sometimes it's exactly what I need, and I'm glad to be able to put my hand right on it. It's going to be things like this, I suspect, that make a clothing no-buy year really sustainable over the long haul. Again, I'm not keeping things that really don't work for me. But assuming we're over that hurdle, being able to pull something out and say, Oh, yeah! THIS! –– when THIS is something I know works for me, even if it doesn't work for me on a daily basis –– is what keeps the mental claustrophobia from setting in.
By the way, as I've said before, I'm not opposed to minimalism, per se. I am opposed to the promotion of minimalism to the level of a virtue in itself. It isn't. Embracing Lady Poverty in one area, if not all areas, of your life can be a subsidiary of a cultivated virtue like trust, hope, detachment. In that service, a move toward minimalism might bear much fruit. In itself, however, minimalism, as a free-standing ism, is frankly kind of performative and valueless, and people can sabotage their own happiness and peace of mind in serious ways by assigning it more power in their lives than it deserves. I think the Father of Lies likes to gloat over those influences that raise our anxiety levels and lower our thresholds for guilt and self-loathing, probably a lot more than he gloats over our enjoyment of beauty and quality and variety in our attire.
So that's my sermon for today, brought to you largely by my imposter syndrome over participating in this translation reading and being billed as a medieval "expert" –– though the host, Len Krisak (a marvelous poet himself), has been very reassuring! Now to go read Pearl, and also continue reading Turgenev, whom I seem to have embraced over de Maupassant for the time being. Turgenev's writing, albeit in translation, is so beautiful, full of a contemplative interiority that speaks to me, honestly, a lot more than the more tortured psychology of Dostoevsky. I have a feeling that this novel –- translated under various titles, but I'm reading it as A House of Gentle Folk –- is going to be very sad and full of suffering, but it's still suffused with a spiritual light that seems to touch everything in its world.
Made myself send out some poems today, too, the first submission of 2022.