Life Moving Forward

Today was the perfect snowy day. Not too cold with so many fluffy flakes swirling around, and it will likely be the last for the season, so I knew I had to rush out in my pretty linen house dress to snap a few photos before it melted away. I spoke in a previous post about taking a hard look at my life and begining a complete renovation of my home, my wardrobe, and the way I view my life in general. In that post, I spoke mainly about the mental work of getting real about life, what it is and what I can reasonably make it into. I also talked about all the work we've done renovating our home and decluttering our stuff. In this post, I want to look at another way I have begun to make changes, and that is to my wardrobe.

Ever since I was a little girl I have loved antique and vintage styles and whimsical prints. When ModCloth came along it made all those styles available for me to fulfill my lifelong passion for those dresses. I was 30-ish and it worked for me. For over a decade it worked for me. In fact, for the past seven years I worked a job where I was celebrated for my fashion choices, the more whimsical the better. Now all that has changed. Not only am I in my 40s and starting to feel a little silly in certain styles, (ahem, puff dresses) but I also have a job where such things are extremely inappropriate. It was time to change. I knew it, and I was ready. Those clothes just were not accurately representing me and the way I felt about myself to the world anymore.

That's the thing I love about fashion, "it's a journey, not a destination" as Marie-Anne Lecoeur says. If something isn't working for you and getting you the results you want, you get to totally change it. So, I have been changing my wardrobe. I've switched from baggy pajama pants to sleek vintage nightgowns, and whimsical novelty prints to basic understated prints such as polka dots or stripes in natural fibers and timeless styles. I have been exploring brands such as Linennaive and Sondeflor, who make these linen dresses to last and last and last. This Phoenix dress has been my go-to for wearing around the farm on these blustery winter days and I absolutely feel at home in this dress. I feel like myself.

One thing that I really do want to focus on moving forward is fashion that lasts. Frequent readers will know that in this new year, I am trying to really cut my spending and be very mindful about what I buy. To that end, I set myself a generous clothing budget for 2024, and then turned around and spent about 2/3 of it in the month of January alone on some slow fashion pieces like this dress from Linennaive. I also got a couple of hauls from ThredUp of basic pieces in neutral tones that I hope will become more like a capsule wardrobe that I will wear most of the year. (More about that in an upcoming post)

I had a rough start to the year. January has to be the worst month for new beginnings and resolutions to make a fresh start. For starters, it's unbearably cold, people everywhere are getting sick, there are snowdays, and while we're cooped up we're usually surrounded by all that stuff we said we wanted to ditch in the new year, like junk food, too much television, and online shopping. Yes, advertisers are running circles around themselves to get us to keep spending after Christmas and as much as I really wanted to start a new No-Spend and be successful at it, I had a deep sense of foreboding about starting in January.

I also had some serious emotional upheavals occur. I knew they were coming but they still weren't easy and shopping is a coping mechanism. There was one particularly difficult day when I wanted to come home, throw my things down and just shop. Which I did. I had about $500 worth spread across various shopping carts, but instead of buying it, I decided to get up and do something productive. Four sinks of dishes later (yes, that's right, apparently no one had done them in days) I decided to just wait on any purchases until the next day. The next day I decided to wait until the next day. On that third day, I spent $50 on some fabric for a sewing project and let the rest go. Not a total victory but still a pretty big deal. Yes, I did spend a little bit, but a far cry from a defeat.

So, instead of a No-Buy January & February, I have been working on being very conscientious about writing down not just when I shopped or how much I spent, but also why I shopped in the form of recording which days and times and how I was feeling all throughout the week whether I shopped or not so I could begin to see my patterns, which is how I knew this little relapse was coming and was able to navigate it. So, I set myself a generous budget to last for the whole year. The fact that, um, yeah, I spent 2/3 of my clothing budget in January alone could have been reason enough to say, "Screw it, I give up!" Yes, I could have looked at that as a failure, but instead, I chose to press on and not give up. "Ok, if I've spent two-thirds of my yearly budget already, I guess March is the perfect time to do a low-buy/no-buy to help me get back on track," I thought.

I'm just ready to live my life a different way and the way I dress is definitely a reflection of that and so is the way that I spend. I don't know how well I'll do at sticking to my budget, but I have to give it a try and no matter if I slip up a few times, or even fall down a few times, I'm determined to get back and and keep moving forward into the kind of life I truly want to live and finding quality pieces of clothing that make me feel at home in myself and my life again.