There's this show on TLC that I like a lot called Clean Sweep. The basic idea is these organizers go 'round to peoples houses and clean up their clutter. But we're not talking about a little mess, or even a big mess, we're talkin' people living in one giant mess, huge the way you think of gods as big. If you're having a hard time of envisioning living in a garbage dump, look at these pictures to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

Our apartment is nothing like those pictures. But purging is always good for the soul. So in the spirit of Clean Sweep, I joined in my family's yard sale. We'll be moving out of our apartment soon, and we had some spare junk to pass off onto others for cash.

I used this opportunity to do something I have never actually done: I purged my wardrobe.

I will confess something to you right now. I love clothes. I would love to express my mood or personality or feelings or even certain memories through clothes. I see clothes and fashion as a kind of medium for expression, so in my own mind it's kind of like art. You don't have to like what I'm wearing, but it speaks to me, that kind of thing. But I lack two things in order to do this: 1) the budget to buy things that I actually like and 2) the lack of guilt to buy clothes.

For a reason beyond my comprehension I can't buy clothes without feeling guilty. I never used to feel guilty before I got married, when suddenly my money was no longer my money but "our" money. Like clothes were too frivolous when things like food and video games could be purchased instead. Yeah, video games could be considered frivolous, but they allow me and Z to spend time together doing something we both enjoy, so it doesn't feel as frivolous as it sounds.

But as it went, I had a closet full of clothes and nothing to wear. This was due to the fact that I had never gotten rid of a single item of clothing since I was in high school. I had carried my signature loud polyester shirts with me through my teenage years, across the country (twice), and I finally let them go on Saturday. I couldn't be at the yard sale myself, because I knew when people would want to give me a dollar for a shirt, I wouldn't be able to let it go.

I employed the help of my husband in an effort to better clear out my closet. Another confession: I wore trash clothes. This is not to say that I wore clothes that were trashy, or whore-ish, or turned me into a hoochie mama. I was wearing clothes that were found in the trash. In my defense, I was not the one who was going through garbage cans and the garbage cans were in rich neighborhoods. But like I said, I felt too guilty to actually purchase clothes, so I accepted rejects from rich people's trash cans that my uncle found. My husband did not like this, but he also doesn't like me buying clothes, so he didn't complain (verbally). But needless to say, all of my trash clothes went to the yard sale.

As did 80% of my wardrobe.

It's liberating to be rid of things that didn't fit very well (most of my clothes being from the garbage meant they were usually too big for me), or things that I have grown out of--like an unforgiving polyester shirt with a geisha screened on the front with a hood. I don't know what I was thinking, but I wore that all the time between the ages of 16-17. I looked back at that shirt and didn't remember why I liked it, but I had great memories associated with that shirt.

After I bagged up my clothes, and I looked at my closet, I noticed something. No wonder I had so many clothes and nothing to wear. Even now, I am left with quality clothing items, but nothing matches. And I'm the kind of person who likes to experiment with mismatching--but there are rules even I follow: like prints should contrast each other enough and not blend together and make you look like a bag lady, and the colors should be in the same tone or hue (in other words a skirt I have that has a Monet painting on it would not go well with my black and white and red and pink striped button-down shirt).

Well, at least we made $110 on all my clothes and the excess of unnecessary objects laying around the apartment.

( 3comments )

at June 28, 2005 7:16 PM  Alex_Knight said...

So are you planning to make sure your stuff matches a little better? Or keeping the emptier closet for a while?

 

at June 28, 2005 9:38 PM  Samantha said...

I would like to buy clothes to match what I have already, but who knows if I'll be able to do that anytime soon. It makes me want to just get rid of the clothes I can't match at this point (my family is having another yard sale on July 23rd), because why hold on to clothes I still can't wear?

 

at June 29, 2005 2:31 AM  Lorie said...

Could you buy something simple, like a white shirt or black pants, that would go with lots of the mismatched stuff? Maybe it's better to just get rid of them while you're in the mood to do so, but if you're that low on clothes,it makes sense to buy something that matches what you currently own rather than get rid of it all and have to start from scratch when you don't have anything to wear to school or have to do laundry every three days.