The Existential Crisis (No, Really) of Cleaning out Your Closet

I started following a French style guru on Youtube. Like many, she teaches that you should love the body you have, dress for it, and rid your closet of that which is poor-fitting, doesn’t work with your lifestyle, and doesn’t make you feel great.

She’s right, I thought. It’s just that simple. I have a tiny apartment – all the more reason why I don’t need to be holding onto clothes that don’t fit, or that I don’t like.

Armed with this conviction, I waited for a rainy day to spend inside, and then set to work. If I couldn’t remember the last time I’d worn it, I’d try it on once more for good measure, then put it in a pile to go to Goodwill. Easy.

Two hours later I was almost in tears.

Two hours of brutal honesty had led to a Goodwill pile that was breaking my heart.

It contained:

-- A pair of trendy, expensive designer jeans I had bought my senior year of college. I had combed through a department store searching for them, after I’d seen them on a mannequin in the front window. I bought them thinking I would wear them to go out on weekends, maybe to go dancing or to parties, assuming I would someday soon have that sort of life, since I was almost free of school. Whether or not that someday ever came, it didn’t matter now: even if I managed to lose some weight, it wouldn’t stop the fat rolls from oozing out over the top of the high waistband, or stop me from sweating and panting just to get all the pretty, sailor-style buttons fastened. I remember how confident the design made me feel when I first tried them on: I was a sexy disco-pirate.

Now I just looked like an overcooked sausage that had partially burst out of its casing.

Same song, second-verse for a pair of button-ups I’d bought from Express right after college, justifying the price tag by thinking I was going to be a TV reporter soon enough. Except now, I wouldn’t want to appear on TV, or anywhere, with a shirt full of buttons holding on for dear life while the fabric pulled in all the wrong directions.

-- A suede jacket with a ruffled neckline. For years, I held onto it because it was beautiful and well-made, like everything else my Grandma bought me. She always wanted me to have nice things, and thought that I would go on to get a job in a nice office or news station somewhere, rather than waiting tables for so long. But the frills looked silly on me, the hem hit me at a point that wasn’t flattering, and the style was always too fancy for work and too busy for a date.

-- A sweater that my mother had given me for a birthday: I had loved all the pretty, bohemian-princess details when I picked it out. But the nude-beige color made my complexion look muddy, the sleeves were too short, and the embellished shoulders made me look like a hulking linebacker, not a delicate shabby-chic maiden. The rhinestone detail and the frilly neckline looked charming on a 22 year old, but looked silly and infantile on me now.

-- The pants that used to be my “work fatpants” – roomy throughout the hips and thighs in a retro, Katheryn Hepburn kind of way – were now too tight to sit in without risk of ripping out seams or buttons.

 -- The skirt/sweater set, or the pantsuit that had been gifted to me years ago, that would work if maybe I lost 20 pounds…. And got the right shapewear… and maybe if I got a different blouse, or a different pair of shoes to “make it work” … or a different body… or a different life.

I looked sullenly at the remainder of my winter wardrobe while cold rain pelted my windows. No frills. No pale ivories or delicate beiges or sunny yellows; just solid, dark colors. Sweaters to hide in, and long, forgiving, tunic-style tops. Leggings and stretchy jeans and mom-jeans. Very few zippers or buttons or clean, crisp lines. Just stretchy things; tug it on, peel it off.

This is it. This is how some women end up spending all their time in black yoga pants and hoodies. And it’s not like its gonna get any better than this.

At three days a week, I was working out as often as I could make time for. I ate spinach salads, chicken, deli meat and whatever produce was on sale, and sometimes allowed myself Greek yogurt. But it was never enough to stop the incessant carb cravings when I got stressed, the bloating for a solid week before my period, the near-daily jonesing for a chocolate fix. I could climb a mountain 3 times a month, or climb 10 flights of stairs up to my micro-apartment every day, but it evidently wasn’t mitigating for the pizza parties or late-night cocktails with friends, or workplace potlucks and homemade Christmas candy…

My God, what’s going to happen to me/my body if I ever have a baby? When I hit menopause and my metabolism changes again?

No sense in worrying about a baby that, at the rate your dating life is moving, you’re not likely to have.

Yeah, well, it’s not gonna move any faster if my confidence is in the toilet because I’m obese.

All this guilt, all these memories, all these unfulfilled expectations -- just to tidy up my closet.

Eventually, I pulled myself together and went back to my Youtube guru.

Find your uniform, she advised in her clipped but cheerful accent. Find the go-to outfit that always makes you feel good, is work-appropriate, can be dressed up or down with accessories, and is comprised mostly, if not entirely, of classic -- not trendy -- pieces.

I thought about what I always felt confident in; what had always garnered me compliments. The list was short, but at least it was there:

-- Boots. I had several pairs: riding boots, knee-high stiletto boots, and functional, plain ankle-length work boots. They all still fit, and they all worked well in constantly-rainy winter weather in Seattle.

-- Blazers. I had at least two well-made ones. I remembered the first blazer I ever owned, which I wore religiously to Speech and Debate meets in high school. I always felt ready, composed, competitive and mature in a blazer; things I was not used to feeling throughout adolescence.

-- Skater skirts. I had three. I had just forgotten about them; they were stored away with my sundress collection. In warmer months, everyone from my mother to my co-workers complimented the flowy knee-length style that showed off my legs and accentuated my barely-existent waistline, but that also wasn’t restrictive.

Could I make them work for spring and fall? I dug them out and went to work, pairing them with tights, blouses and cardigans (or blazers!) for work, or with my AC/DC t-shirts on days off. Turns out, they also look fabulous with boots.

A better image of myself started to take shape in my head. As I packed the guilt-inducing pile of clothes into a trash bag and hauled it off to my car, I resolved, in lieu of the garments, to instead hold onto  1. the memory of how they used to make me feel and 2. The hope that they could maybe be used by someone else to land a job, or feel cute.

“Oh, jeez! There’s a ton of clothes in here. Thank you!” said the Goodwill attendant who helped me unload my car.

That helped me feel better too.