Yesterday I had a problem. I couldn’t
find my shorts. I will admit that I have a pretty severe clothing addiction, so
you would think that one pair of shorts wouldn’t matter. I do own plenty of
shorts, but I only wear one pair, and they were missing. I spent hours looking
everywhere possible for my shorts to no avail. After searching behind the
dresser with a flashlight and washing every piece of laundry, I thought I would
have to give up the fight. They were gone.
My last-ditch effort was to confront
my husband, could he have possibly thrown my beloved shorts away? I do wear
them almost every day in the summer. Maybe he was tired of seeing the shorts
and did them in. My questioning began, “Babe, have you seen my missing shorts?
I think I need to put out an APB to find them. You haven’t seen them, have you?”
He said, “You mean the tan and white
ones?”
He knew which ones, making him look more
guilty. “Did you throw them away? I know you are probably sick of them, but they are the only ones that fit like they were made for me. Just
confess if you threw them out, so I can grieve and move on.”
He laughed a bit and said, “No, I
didn’t throw them out. I like the way you look in them,” and I told him that I had looked
everywhere I could think of.
As I went on about my day, I decided
I might have a problem. I worked on the quarterly chore that I dread with a
passion- changing my closet over from the winter selection to the spring. The
job entails sorting through waaaayyyy too many clothes and dragging them up the
stairs to store in a spare closet until next season, then bringing the spring (cooler-
but not the coolest clothing) down in exchange- then there are the boots to
store and swap for sandals and cute spring shoes.
I’m not sure which thing about the
task is the worst, lugging the heavy armloads up and down the stairs, or the
shame that I feel when I think about how much money I have wasted on clothing.
I haven’t always been a clothing hoarder. For many years, I didn’t have the
money to support my clothing habit. I could barely afford to clothe my kids. I
guess when I became able to treat myself to buying cute outfits, I got more than
a little carried away. As I haul them up and down, I remember each purchase. Oh
yeah, I bought that shirt at the mall in Douglasville, or I bought that one at
the Anniston TJ Maxx.
I sort them into categories, to
organize the closet to the best of my abilities, making a short sleeve casual
section arranged by color, then a work top section arranged by color, and
bottoms (skirts, capris, and pants) arranged by color, etc. As I grab each
hanger and decide which category they belong I realize something. Of all these
things that I haul up and down the stairs, there are only really a few that I
wear time and time again. They, like my missing shorts, suit me. The rest of
the items are only supplementary impostors pretending to be the clothes I care
for. If the impostors were to go missing, I’d probably not even notice, much
less grieve their loss.
Swimming in my guilt of excess, I decide
to change my evil ways. I vow to radically slow down my clothing purchases. I
think before I buy anything else I will ask myself if I really need it, try it on to
see if it is the perfect fit, and then gently talk to the article of clothing asking it if we are meant
to be. It is going to be hard, but I will practice clothing abstinence.
By the end of the day, my husband
came up to me with a smile on his face and a prize in his hands. “Look, what I
found behind the chair that I sort laundry on.” I hugged him tightly. He had
rescued my nearly eight-year-old shorts, and my grief lifted. The temporary
loss of my favorite shorts inspired a commitment to clothing abstinence. Now
every time I put them on I will be reminded that I have all I need! It's a good thing that I wear them almost every day, because I'm gonna need a lot of reminding!
You hooked me with your post on Five59, nice! I feel like I've found my soul sister. I loved this so much!
ReplyDelete