Back in 2015, right after I left WBCL, I spent my days cleaning, organizing, and purging our house. We had so. much. stuff. We had crammed two complete households into one small house without having time to really look through, sort, and make sense of it all. It took me several weeks to weed through all of it, and we had a giant rummage sale that ended up paying for a vacation! (Woot woot!)
One of the things I worked on in that time was my closet. I had just learned about capsule wardrobes and how you could make multiple outfits with just a few key pieces if you were strategic about it. So I worked on that and for several years, I lived the capsule wardrobe life.
In reality, I still don't have that many clothes. Our walk-in closet in our room holds both our clothes with plenty of room to spare. But despite the smaller size of my wardrobe contents, I have strayed from the idea of a capsule wardrobe. I have not necessarily kept up with things that can be easily mixed and matched.
So I found myself back in the same old boat from 2016. Lots to wear with nothing to wear.
But it was more than that, actually. It wasn't just about the inability to mix and match without looking like I got dressed in the dark. I realized for the first time in 44 years that I have never truly sat down to make sense of what kinds of clothing pieces make me feel my very best.
I took a free wardrobe class from Putting Me Together (I shared it on the Saturday Six a while back, but here's the link again) that took about an hour to listen to. I learned many things from Audrey in that class, but she put heavy emphasis on understanding that the reason we have so many clothes we don't wear is because we aren't buying the right clothes to begin with. We buy things because they're on sale and they seem like a good deal. We buy things for a single purpose event. We don't stop to think about the cuts of clothing that flatter us. We don't think about the colors that work best with our skin tones. We just buy without much consideration, and then we hate what we buy and never wear it.
Another thing she said that really hit me was that most women (people, really, but her target audience is women) don't ever update what they're doing in life that drives their wardrobe choices. The example she gave was that a few years earlier in her life, she had a job that required a business casual dress code in the office. She was also in a season of life where most of her friends were getting married, and she attended weddings on the regular. Fast forward a few years...and she was working a new job that actually was much more causal. She didn't have nearly as many weddings to attend, but she did have kids of her own running around the house. Because of those changes, many of the clothes she wore often before weren't getting much wear, and she needed something different to fit her new season of life.
Well, that has certainly been true for me! Since the great closet cleanout of 2016, I have been a stay-at-home wife, been a public speaker, been a writer, worked in a church office, worked from home at WillowBridge, and now I'm working a hybrid schedule - some in the Love INC office and some from home. My clothing needs have changed often, haven't they? But you know what hasn't changed? My clothing.
In the class I took, Audrey encouraged making a list of every clothing scenario from present-day life to reevaluate actual needs. I had way more fun with this than I probably should have, and I also learned a lot about myself in this process. So today (after this world's longest topic introduction), I want to share with you the list I made of potential types of clothing styles I would need and what I learned in the list-making.
Note: my categories are in no particular order.
1. Neighborhood walks. Really, Bekah? Does this need to be a category? Well, it does, because we do it a lot! We walk Lexi twice a day (weather permitting) and sometimes take additional strolls down the River Greenway, etc. I feel like most of the time, I look like I just rolled out of bed (because in the morning, I actually did) or I haven't updated my clothes in a decade (because in many cases, I have not). We learned early on that the fastest way to meet people in your neighborhood is to have a dog. People actually talk to you when you have a dog. They don't so much when you're just out walking. We've met a TON of our neighbors through our walks. And so far, my first impressions have been 100% raggedy, not 100% cute. It wouldn't kill me to try a little harder before stepping outside my home to meet my neighbors!
2. Work from home. I learned during the pandemic (as have many of you, perhaps) that I take my work more seriously when I don't work in my jammies. Getting dressed in SOME fashion helps me feel more purposeful. Also...we have one neighbor who drops by periodically to share food or say hi, and without fail, I look homeless every time she comes over. Having comfy clothing that looks like actual clothing is a goal for me when working from home.
3. Work out at home. I do not currently have a gym membership, so I do my workouts at home. The blessing of that is that it really doesn't matter what I look like, because only Ryan, Braeya, and Lexi see me. It doesn't matter if my clothes fit well or are too tight or too loose. You don't have to look cute to sweat. That's a fact. But it's also a fact that if you feel better about yourself when approaching a workout, you're more likely to DO the workout.
4. Work from the office. Love INC doesn't have a stringent dress code, and for this I am thankful. But there is a tricky balance to strike when going to work. On one hand, I want to look well-dressed and put together, because sometimes we meet with churches, pastors, or businesses in town. I want to represent our work well and be taken seriously in those moments. But one thing I did learn from my years at WillowBridge is that when you're working with those living in poverty mindset, looking too polished can be off-putting to them. They can feel like you're too aloof and not relatable if you are too dressed up and fancy. So I'm working to find options that fall in the middle of these two needs when it comes to the days I work in the office.
5. Dates and meet-ups with friends. Of course, I want to look cute for Ryan when we go out on dates! And though I don't do a ton of this, I do meet up with friends for coffee now and then. Usually both the dates and the meet-ups are more on the casual side, rather than being super dressy events, but I still want to look cute and confident when I go!
6. Church and speaking engagements. I know that dressing up for church is not as typical as it was when I was growing up. When I was little, men always came to church in suits and ties, and women always wore dresses, hose, and heels. While I am not mourning the loss of the hose, I do try to dress up a little more for church than I do for anything else. It's a personal conviction and not something I expect everyone around me to do. The same is true for speaking engagements. Most of mine are at women's retreats and conferences, and honestly, anymore, nice jeans are acceptable there! But I usually dress up a bit more than that...again, just a personal conviction. Still, the need to dress up doesn't run over into a semi-formal level.
7. Lounging at home. I laughed at this one at first, but it actually also made me feel pretty convicted. When I'm at home and not planning to go anywhere, I find that I'm spending most of my time in my most-loved clothes. And by that, I mean most worn-out. The oldest and most faded t-shirts leftover from a decade ago. Shorts that need to be thrown away. It's pretty bad. (You'd think that greeting my local fire department in such garb twice in the last three months would have pushed me faster, but it hasn't.) I thought about it and realized my time at home is when I spend the most time with Ryan. You remember Ryan, right? The man I love more than anyone else in the whole world? The one I want to look my best for? And yet he usually sees my worst options on the daily? EEK!!!! That was when I realized there is nothing wrong with finding some cute clothes for hanging out at home. He deserves to see so much better than what he usually sees.
8. Writing. This last one was a late-added category. I've started doing more writing again, and while there is certainly not a uniform for it, I have found some cute t-shirts with writing phrases on them that would be fun to have for the days when I'm donning my writing hat full time.
So, these are my categories! These are the ways I spend my days. Not every day includes every category. Some of the categories actually dip into the same kind of clothing as another one. But these are the things I want to keep in mind as I consider the ways I want to craft my wardrobe.
If you're in need of an overhaul too, I highly recommend sitting down to think through a list like this for yourself. It's more helpful than you'd think! And if you have an hour to spare, take the class over at Putting Me Together. It really is helpful - and free!
