Judge if you must, but what I learned from this unplanned experiment has changed my perspective on a lot of things. First of all, if you really know me, you might be thinking, “This really isn’t that much of a stretch, she wears black all the time.” TRUE. However, I have never repeated the same outfit every day for a month. As for my favorite color, a few years ago I saw a meme that read, “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color.” I seriously wanted to hunt down the person who wrote it, because I was convinced, we had been separated at birth.
Like many unplanned events in life, this one just snuck up on me. It was a little like when I learned to adopt the new habit of going a few more days in between hair washes – only add on about 25 or 26 days. It all started one morning in August. I had just showered after the gym and decided to pull on my favorite comfy outfit – a black tank top and shorts. I had planned on working at my desk most of the day and the plant in the corner of the room certainly didn’t care what I was wearing, so why not be comfortable? This seemed reasonable. “Why not?” I thought. As it turned out, without planning, the next day I repeated the process with the same mental check-in of my plans for the day. “Why not?” I thought, again. After all, it saved me time and simplified my life – the essence of Virgo living! And so, it began – repeating this outfit every day, and I fell into a nice comfy rhythm with my comfy outfit.
Everything was going great and uneventful until day five came when I hit a speed bump. I was headed out to a doctor appointment and paused while getting dressed. I actually thought about wearing something else. “Is this okay?” I thought to myself. That really hit me. Why would my shorts and tank top not be okay? It’s August in the desert, of course this is okay. So, I grabbed my coffee and pulled on my shorts, and off I went feeling completely liberated.
All day that day I thought about what that momentary struggle was about. For most women, what we choose to wear speaks volumes – it goes far beyond choosing between colors, prints, pants or dresses. Many would go so far to say that our clothes represent who we are. (And don’t even get me started on shoes.) Clothes can impact our self-confidence which translates to our self-talk and value. Then our choices might be validated by people in our circle or even strangers which can boost self-esteem.
If you dig into this subject further, you’ll find that around 800 B.C., Homer wrote in The Odyssey, “The clothes make the man.” This idiom was so profound that it has been restated by Erasmus, Mark Twain, and even Shakespeare, himself. So, there I was, on day five, fighting a 2,800-year-old “clothing identity” mindset, on top of the double whammy curse of being trapped in a Catholic school uniform for 12 years, and being raised by a critical mom with strong opinions. The end result – overthinking my choices every time I opened my closet door.
Yes, day five was a real game changer for me. I realized it wasn’t that I stopped caring about what I wore, but I realized that it really didn’t matter. What I discovered was surprising – I kept getting dressed day after day, I went to the same places, I kept the same appointments, I saw the same people, I ran the same errands, and I was still happy. I spent less time contemplating clothes, less headspace worrying about choices and a lot less hot water on laundry. In an unexpected twist, the lack of color or creative expression in my wardrobe choices made me realize that Horace might have been wrong – the clothes didn’t make me, it’s actually the contrary – I make them.
On the morning of day 30, I showered then started to get dressed. I stood there staring into my closet, looking at my clothes like they were strangers. I couldn’t understand how I had even worn some of this stuff, or how it had even mattered so much to me before. As it turns out, the minimalist lens I began looking at life through a few years ago seems to have more of an impact than I would have expected. Through the downsizing of space, the purging of “stuff,” and the understanding of needs vs. wants, I am much happier as a result. It seems inevitable that I would end up here after 30 days – sitting at my desk in my black tank top and shorts, doing what I love with my fingers tapping away and sharing what I’ve always known – It doesn’t take much to be happy.
Shelli Netko © 2024
Add comment
Comments