February 28th, 2018

  I am finally finished! Whew!  At long last, I have tried on and made the decisions to keep, give away or throw out all of my clothes. YEARS worth of accumulation, my friends, years.  I had clothes nearly as old as my children (yes those got thrown away).  And it only took, let's see, how long have we lived here now...?  Ok that's an exaggeration, but I did start this project of sorting through my clothes months ago.  I only worked on it a little at a time, to be honest.  All of the planets have to be in the proper alignment for me to work on a project like this.  

​First I have to have the correct amount of patience to try on that many articles of clothing...yeah, I have really gotta be in the right mood for that.   Patience is a virtue.   And It's something I always aspire to, but in real life, not something I have loads of.

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Then I have to be having a good body consciousness day.  If I don't feel good (or at least Not Horrible) about the way I look, I'm not going to like ANY of the clothes I try on. The idea here wasn't to get rid of everything own, just the stuff I'm not going to wear anymore.   

​Then I have to be feeling decisive.  If I am feeling wishy-washy, it would be a zillion or so times harder to get rid of anything. Plus, I get so emotionally attached to my clothes that making the necessary decisions required to get rid of something I love is so much harder if I'm not in the right frame of mind. 

​Of course, I have to have the time.  It is not something I can knock out in fifteen minutes. Nope this process take literally hours. It's not just a matter of looking at it, trying it on and immediately throwing it into one of the three piles. No.  Of course not, that would be too easy.  I have to walk around in it, try each piece with other pieces, tops with bottoms, skirts with blouses, etc.  And of course shoes. The right shoes can make an outfit, the wrong ones can ruin it.  So it's like chemistry a little bit. IF all the correct pieces are put together, it makes something else!  And that means I also have to have the endurance for this job.  I know it sounds crazy, but it can very tiring to sort through the piles and piles and PILES of clothes that I seem to accumulated over all these years.  And each step is repeatedly, well,  repeated.  Exhausting.

And I have to be able to be brutally honest with myself. Some days I'm really good at lying to myself. Other days, flat out denial rules.  So I have to be having a totally candid  with myself day.  Honest both ways.....Both, "Sam your butt looks as big as a bus in those pants"   but also, "Hey, not bad for an old broad".   And then the, "Yes it's gorgeous and I look pretty good in it, but be honest Sam, when are you going to wear it?".  I have to be honest but kind with myself. 

​So, there it is. At long last, the job is complete.  The closet is far less crowded with things I wasn't wearing anyway now gone and my niece will be the happy recipient of a nice bunch of new stuff.  Odds are good that there will be at least one thing in these bags that she will like and can wear.  Everything else can be donated.   Some to Goodwill other things she hands off to her sister (my other niece) who is a teacher for her school's theater department.  How cool is that?  I can go to the school to watch a play and see some of my clothes there! LOL!  Kind of like having visiting rights;)
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So the clothes are all folded and bagged and sitting on my kitchen  counter. I feel a little like Santa right now.  heh.  In my family we aren't offended by hand-me-downs. We get excited about the possibility of free clothes!  The last bag, even my sister went through first and found something! Woohoo!

​And I feel very accomplished.  Took far too long, but it's done.  Next project.....?  I'm not sure yet. I only am positive that there will be one.  I think I love starting a new project specifically be cause it feels so good when it's finally done!