The past few days have been filled with a lot of laundry. Since moving to our new home in the country, we've been sorting our belongings, unpacking, putting away, and washing just about everything we have. As a result, I've been given a pretty good appreciation to exactly how much stuff we really have.
Before we moved here, we didn't have our own washer and dryer. Laundry was done in big batches when we could haul it off to the laundromat. Often times we only pulled together the things we thought we needed. Most times it ended up a random assortment of children's clothes, half of which didn't even suit the season or wasn't even the right size, and a collection of the most needed adult cloths. Our laundry took over the house. There were dirty clothes cast off just about everywhere. The floor in my room was piled with clothes that never got put away and cloths that desperately needed to be washed, but we could never afford to run through it, load after load, time after time. We just got behind, and because we only did laundry when we needed it most, behind is where we stayed.
Now that we have our own laundry facilities, I've been spending more time than I care to think about washing clothing, folding, putting away, and organizing. I didn't really know just how much we had until I looked at the growing pile in the hall as I tossed it all out of the room. There is still laundry on my floor and a waist high pile of baskets and bins in the hall of stuff that needs to be cleaned. I've been trying to find homes for it all, but I'm starting to realize just where our biggest problems lie. All of our wardrobes need a serious overhaul. Thankfully, this mass laundering has been inspiration to start.
Starting with the littlest one in the house, I shouldn't have been surprised by the mass amount of clothing we've piled up. Babies generally have a lot of clothes. Not only do they go through it like crazy because of spit up, drool, and everything else, but they need a wide variety of sizes on hand, just in case. Until a child is about two-years-old, they go through multiple size changes in a year. As a result, it never hurts to have the next size or two up on hand because it will seem like one day everything will fit fine, and then with no warning, nothing will fit at all. I've got such a variety of clothing for my littlest that I could probably outfit him for the first year with no question, and I have some garments that should fit until he's two. Thankfully, as he gets older, that giant stack of baby clothes will thin out and I'll be left with only needing to plan ahead a season or a year at most. I can get behind hanging on to what he can grow into, especially since I know we'll be moving into yearly size changes before I know it.
Unfortunately, the little guy still needs a wardrobe overhaul. I knew I had a bunch of clothing that simply wasn't going to fit my little man. He'd outgrown all of his newborn clothes and the next size up was starting to get small on him. Since we're choosing to go with cloth diapers, most of the "6-9 months" clothing isn't going to fit over his bottom, nor will many of the pajamas and rompers. Most clothing isn't meant to be worn with big, bulky bottoms. Thankfully, I intend on making plenty of longies and shorties, so my little guy will have plenty of bottoms to wear and I won't have to worry about it. This means his wardrobe has a lot of weeding out to do. There are a few select garments that I've decided to keep for the far-off day I decide to have another child, but there's a growing pile marked for "donations" to go to GoodWill or Salvation Army. If I can't use them, someone else might as well have them. Little body suits aren't as ideal as they used to be. Pajamas, rompers, and pants are being tossed because we don't use them, though we've kept a couple that will still work well enough. Unfortunately, finding normal shirts for babies this age is quite the challenge, as I'm finding out, so his wardrobe is going to be slightly lacking for the first year. Even so, we're finding that we can make things work, even if we leave bodysuits unbuttoned. Thankfully, all the outgrown and impractical clothing we have packed away can now find a home with another family, reducing the burden of storage and clutter of things we don't need.
My older son had the exact opposite wardrobe problem. We found ourselves washing his clothing all the time, yet he never had enough to last. With his preferences of wearing shirts for days at a time, he didn't have a problem with this, but come laundry day I was always frustrated to only find two or three shirts and one pair of pants or shorts. I knew we had bought him more than that, but it seemed they somehow all disappeared. With sorting through all the laundry in the house, I'm finally starting to find it all and fit it all into his dresser. Since his clothing was so greatly outnumbered by all the other clothes in the house, it was kind of like finding a needle in a haystack. Much of it was also packed away in random boxes, places I never would have found it otherwise. If it wasn't for the efforts to pull everything out to pack away and store in a logical manner, I probably never would have found it all, and I'm sure when I got through the few remaining boxes, I'll find even more of his clothing. Much of what we've got for him is too small and needs to be put away until the littlest one grows into it, but there's plenty that he can get through a week without doing laundry. He's got the least clothing in the house, but he's got enough to get by.
My daughter, on the other hand, has a wide variety of sizes as well. She's gotten a lot of hand-me-downs from friends and neighbors. A good deal of it just needs to be put away for later, but she's also got clothes she's long since outgrown that somehow keep making it back into her drawers. She loves those garments, but she just can't fit them anymore. That doesn't stop her from wearing them. She really just needs a complete wardrobe overhaul. I need to make sure everything she still has fits her, and whatever doesn't is either put away until she grows into it, or is given away so she can stop trying to fit into things that are much too small. She also has a horrible habit of wanting to wear the same outfit for days on end, but I think that will be easier to manage once all her clothes are in her dresser and can no longer use the excuse that she can't find any clean clothing. Of course, that won't stop her from trying, but at least I'll know better.
Sorting through my clothes has left me with mixed feelings. I've started to notice that I don't have just one style, but I'm finding I've got much more defined preferences than I once had. Over the past few years I've downsized quite a bit. I had tons of clothing given to me over the years by friends and family or when I was living in the shelter. Some of it was clothing I've held on to from high school. Most of it didn't suit me anymore. For one reason or another, I just never wore it, so it was time to pass it on to someone who would wear it. Now I'm realizing that I've still got way too much. I have black jeans from working at LensCrafters as an optometric technician. I've got khaki colored pants from when I was in the lab. I've got all sorts of shirts that just don't fit me right, or I don't wear because I don't like the cut or the fit. Most of it I held on to on the off chance that I would need them again, or because it meant I could wait longer between laundry days. Now that I can do my laundry at the house, I no longer need most of it. When I look into work again, I'm going to be looking for more of the business casual or business professional look, so much of what I've held on to simply won't be appropriate anymore. It's time to let much of that go and only hang on to the stuff I'll really wear, the stuff I need. I will admit, letting it all go isn't going to be easy, but it's high time I did. It will feel so much better to see all my clothing fit neatly in my closet and dresser, and it will be incentive to do laundry more often, instead of waiting for the mountain to get so high it will take days to clean and put away.
Then there's my boyfriend, who really is the woman of the family. He has more clothing than perhaps the rest of the family combined. He's got cloths for every occasion, though most of them he hardly ever wears. He's got a good selection of professional-looking clothing, which I can get behind. He wears them for interviews and hopes to some day get a good job where he may just need that kind of clothing. He's got a drawer full of nothing but industrial-style club pants, which he wears all the time. He's got a collection of band shirts and other t-shirts. He has jeans and button-down shirts for that more preppy look. Some of it he wears all the time, and I completely understand wanting a variety of clothing to dress to suit the mood, but he's got clothing that he only wears when there's nothing else. I really wish he'd cut back, but he keeps telling me he needs more clothing because he doesn't have enough! I love him dearly, but he takes up more of the dresser and closet than I do!
In reality, looking at the way my family is dressed has taught me some valuable lessons. The most important lesson to know when it's time to let something go, no matter how practical it is. I'll have plenty of opportunities to buy more clothes as time goes on, things that more suit my current styles, tastes, and needs at the time. I'll be making room for more pretty hand-knits and other things that I would truly love to have, but would get lost in my endless collection of clothes I never wear. It's better to have fewer things that I adore and wear all the time than to clutter my home with "once in a while" selections that distract me from the things I really love.
So here I am, trying to cut away all the dead weight in my wardrobe, and you know what? It's freeing! I'm breaking away from the modern ideal of materialism. The more you have the happier you'll be doesn't truly apply to my life anymore, at least, not in a physical sense. In many ways, the less you have, the more you'll appreciate and be happier with what you do keep. I wonder if whoever first said "less is more" had any idea how true that statement really is.
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