Category: Wardrobe

I almost bought a dress

~ Gillie ~ 11 Comments

Yes, it is true.  I was seconds away from purchasing a dress that I liked, but did not need, yesterday.  I have a dress I love.  Here it is.

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It is unbelievably comfortable, it makes me feel a million dollars, it can be easily dressed up or down.  It is perfect for my lifestyle and my wardrobe.  The point is I only have one.  Now, I know I only need one, but I had a relapse.  I found myself thinking that now I had found something I loved perhaps I should have more than one.  This thought completely ignored the fact that I have six other dresses in my wardrobe of different styles that also meet the same three criteria above.  Seven dresses is quite enough.

However, the lapsed me is made of sterner stuff.  I knew I had the one in one out rule.  I earmarked the dress to go.  I sat down.  I chose the replacement and I even got as far as inputting my debit card details.

 

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Here fate intervened.  My card was refused.  I was shocked.  I had just checked my balance and knew there were not only funds available but sufficient to allow a dress purchase.  I looked more closely.  I had transposed two numbers.  I was about to correct them when I realised that although I did love the dress.  I really didn’t need it. Furthermore, once I had purchased it, however much I loved it I would know deep down that it was an unecessary purchase and that would detract from the joy I would have wearing it.

As for the dress earmarked for the charity bag.

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It has a reprieve for now.  But if I was willing to sacrifice it, perhaps I don’t really want or need it after all?

PS Yes I do have a bit of a thing for floral prints.  Apparently I am quite on trend this year!

life is easier without clutter

~ Gillie ~ 4 Comments

I was talking with my mother earlier today and the conversation inevitably came around to decluttering.  The area in question being her wardrobe.  She maintains that there is nothing in her wardrobe that the doesn’t like nor anything that doesn’t fit.  On the other hand there is enough in there for her to  have just taken out several boxes of clothes because the wardrobe was full.  It is not a small wardrobe.

That freaked me out.  The idea of having that many clothes was scary. I love the fact that it doesn’t take me ages to get dressed in the morning.  I love the fact that I have discovered tops and bottoms that I would never have thought of putting together look fabulous.  I love the fact that I am much better at layering and thus don’t need so many jumpers (even in the north of England).

So I began to think of other areas where decluttering has actually made my life easier.

The kitchen.  I never have to clean a finickety garlic press, it’s long gone, I grate garlic now.  I am seriously wondering about keeping my Kenward Chef.  I rarely use it.  Today I made Bakewell tart and homemade custard for supper.  I did the whole thing by hand and with a hand held beater.  I would never have bothered to make pudding if I had to get out the Kenward and then wash all the bits up.  I make bread by hand because I enjoy the process.  The yoghurt maker died and I discovered I could make yoghurt just as easily without it.  The kettle died so we started using our stove top one on the aga and/or the hob.  Just as quick.  Leave it on the side of the aga and the water is always warm and there is a nice space on the kitchen surface where the kettle used to be.

The knicker drawer!  I cleared out every single item  of underwear other than recently purchased bras that fit and knickers that I wouldn’t mind being caught wearing if I was run over by a bus.  To the latter I added 4 pairs of bamboo knickers that I adore and with which I  will be replacing all current incumbants as they wear out.  Early mornings are so much easier when there are only five pairs of knickers and a couple of bras in your drawer.

The compost bin.  The kitchen compost bin has been replaced by a smaller one and the garden compost bin moved closer to the house.  Net result nobody minds emptying the compost.  That is a BIG result in our house.

Books.  Having got rid of books I had held onto for all sorts of reasons, but books I was never going to read again I have discovered some gems that was hidden behind all the rest.  Books I had forgotten I had bought but have loved reading …. and passing on.

Oddly enough the area I was most scared about decluttering.  The area where I thought I needed all those bits and pieces was the kitchen.  That has proved to be the area where decluttering has been the most productive.

 

 

 

the statistic in the wardrobe

~ Gillie ~ 10 Comments

When I was at university (back in the Dark Ages) I had to take a statistics course.  I knew it wouldn’t go well and it didn’t.  I had a book by Derek Rowntree called Statistics without Tears.  I remember throwing it across the room and crying “You lied!” You can still get the book, it is actually very good and as I had a  maths A-level under my belt you would have thought I would be have been fine with stats.

I now realise it wasn’t the stats that were the problem but the subject matter.  If there was less talk of X and Y and more of skirts and dresses, or curly kale and sprouting broccoli I would have been top of the class.  So today I bring you wardrobe statistics where SD stands for Silk Dress not Standard Deviation and Chance Variation refers to the oppotune discovery that the pink scarf looks fantastic with the lime green jacket 🙂

You may remember that I took up the challenge of Project 333 last summer.  This year I have decided to reverse the project.  I am keeping a tally of the clothes I wear over a three  month period and then restricting myself to those clothes only for the rest of the summer (I am optomistic that it will be a blazing hot day on St Swithun’s day).

At the end of month one there is a definite trend appearing.  I am wearing almost entirely jersey (bamboo and cotton) and the colours are generally muted with bright accessories.  I am wearing more earrings (I used to just put a pair in and leave them) and have discovered I rather like big dangley ones.  I rarely wear trousers other than leggings with tunics and I almost  never wear a coat.  I am usually barefoot or wear Toms or Fitflops.  This a big reveal as although I have culled my shoe collection quite severely I still  never wear many of them.  Regardless of the weather I tend to wear summery light clothes and just layer up if it gets cold.  I haven’t worn socks or tights all month.

For those of you who would like the figures they are as follows.

  • Tops:  I have worn 10 different tops 16 times in total
  • Bottoms: I have worn 6 bottoms a total of 15 times.
  • Dresses: I have worn 7 dresses a total of 15 times
  • Cardigans:  I have worn 6 cardianas a total of 16 times
  • Scarves:  I have worn 5 scarves a total of 15 times
  • Shoes:  I have worn 6 shoes a total of 30 times, the fitflops 18 times!
  • Coats/Jackets:  I have worn one coat twice and one jacket once.

Colours are very blue heavy.

  • Blues: 27
  • Pinks: 12
  • Grey: 11
  • Neutrals: 9
  • Teal: 8
  • Purple: 7
  • Black: 2
  • Green: 1

I recently had my colours done and I think I am pretty okay with the ones I am wearing but apparently should be wearing more yellow and orange.  I hate both of them on me so I can’t see that happening soon.

In the meantime it has been an interesting look at how I use my wardrobe and you will be delighted to know you will be getting another update at the end of May.  Bet you can’t wait 🙂

 

gaussian decluttering

~ Gillie ~ 5 Comments

S to M declutter will be coming soon.  I can’t believe I just typed that 🙂

In the meantime a quick wardrobe update.  The wardrobe has been my main focus of attention since the big stuff went off to auction/charity/skip earlier this month.  The Gin Gan is wonderfully empty and I am really beginning to feel the day to day difference.  I think psychologically even though I had removed so so so much from our house the fact that it was still on site was a big issue for me and I am glad it’s gone.

Living out of one medium sized suitcase for a month focuses the mind and on my return from Australia I was able to take a look at my much depleted wardrobe and  cull another 30%.  This afternoon I had an urge to do a bit more.  It is interesting that once you really get going it is much, much easier to keep going and become more purposeful.

This is what was left after the Singers and Dancer had picked out the few items that they wanted.

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I now have three full bags of clothes in the back of my car ready to be taken to The British Heart Foundation shop in town.  I was talking to a friend today who is at the beginning of her declutttering process.  She is at the overwhelmed stage.  Remember the Gaussian normal distribution bell curve?  It looks like this.

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Ignoring the statistical use of the bell curve and just looking at the shape for a moment and I think it represents our approach to decluttering.  We start with high hopes and approach the issue head on.  Then we realise just how big the job is, how overwhelming it can feel and we are tempted to give up.  Assuming we keeping going then we plough through the really hard times.  The times when we have got rid of the things that were easy to get rid of because we didn’t really want them.  Now we are faced with the things that we don’t need but somehow we still want.  Finally we get to the top and like the helter skelter rider we come racing down because now it is easy, we “get it”, we want to be unburdened.

So wherever you are on the curve, remember there is a helter skelter ride at the end and it is worth it.

 

 

reverse decluttering part one

~ Gillie ~ 2 Comments

So the reverse declutter begins.  No that does not mean I am bringing stuff in – heaven forbid.  No, this alphabetical mularky, the one that is supposed to encourage me to look beyond the easy declutter and get rid of things that I didn’t really know I had or go into boxes I would prefer were left untouched.

Z is for zips.  As it happens my haberdashery (the posh name for the boxes containing sewing sort of stuff) boxes contained no zips but they did contain a lot of dross.  All of which is now gone.

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Nice and tidy.

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Rubbish and ebay (there wasn’t much in between).

Y is for yellow.  This isn’t actually mine, it belongs to the Boss.  It’s a truly vile yellow sweatshirt.  Goodness knows what he was thinking when he bought it.   He has never worn it and if he did I would disown him.  The yellow chicken has been sitting in my study for years and gathering dust.  Out it goes

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X is for x-tra (well sort of).  Time to get rid of duplicates and things of which I have more than one.  Despite all they have done to provoke me over the years I am keeping all three daughters, dogs, cats and chickens.  Instead I hoofed out two orange squeezers (each one bought whilst on holiday to take advantage of the wonderful fruit.  We now have one small juicer living permanently in our suitcase along with a tin opener, sharp knife, corkscrew and bottle opener – the essentials of any holiday picnic 🙂 ).

W is for wellies.  How many “spare” pairs of wellies do we need?  I used to keep them because we live in the middle of nowhere, it can get very muddy and when the girls were small and had friends over they were useful to have to hand.  I think we are past that stage now.

V is for vittels (it was all I could think of).  Combined three jars of honey into one and ditto various pasta shapes.

U is for undies.  Now there is not a lot I like more than a good clear out of my knicker drawer.  Sad I know.  This time I did underwear drawer and sock drawer and I feel very virtuous.

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Undies

 

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Socks etc.

I know.  Not quite an item a day.  But If you add up all the items going out the door they certainly exceed 365 so not bad for a fortnight I think.  Oh and the first half of the last wardrobe sale on ebay netted over £150.  Wonder what I’d get for a pair of twins and an elder sister with a clean driving licence?

 

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creeping out of the corner

~ Gillie ~ 11 Comments

Way back here I rather piously blogged about decluttering my wardrobe.  Then here I made an inventory of all my clothes.  Then I went and hid in the corner for a while and now I am back on the wagon.

For most of us decluttering is an ongoing process.  Most of us have accumulated so much stuff that it just cannot be excised in a flash.  There is also a psychological and emotional element.  Much as we want to let go it is hard, or at least it is at first.  Believe me, it becomes much, much easier with time.

For charity

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For Ebay

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This is the latest wardrobe cull.  Six  months ago I could never have believed I would be getting rid of these items, but I have learned that I don’t wear them.  I don’t wear them because I don’t know they are there, I don’t wear them because either they don’t feel right, or my lifestyle no longer needs them.  And therefore I don’t need them either.

This afternoon I am going through the t-shirts and accessories and then tomorrow I will do a new inventory.  It has not been all one way.  I have bought clothes.  The clothes I have bought have all been similar in style, cotton jersey/bamboo/linen and very relaxed and easy to wear.  Easy mix and match and easy to layer.  I have noticed a general trend towards similar colours and no patterns on my main items, using scarves and jewellery to add colour.

My next step is to start making my own clothes using ethically sourced natural fabrics.  I have made up a few toiles and am waiting for the first fabrics to arrive.  I’m no great seamstress, so it is fortunate I don’t need to wear a fully fitted suit every day.  But fortunately I can make the kind of simple clothes I do like to wear, and like the food I make or grow myself I know where it has come from and how it was made.

luggage, ex-pat kids and airports

~ Gillie ~ 5 Comments

I love airports.  I think is it partly because I spent much of my childhood as an ex-pat child.  I was one of those children with a red and white striped label around their neck being escorted through security.  I grew to hate the being escorted everywhere bit, but I did rather like the Air Canada policy of putting single (ie not a whole group of forty or more kids as you used to get on the Hong Kong run)  in First Class so they could keep an eye on them.  First Class in those days was just a really big chair and as a minor there was no free wine, but it was still rather cool.  I became quite an expert on which airline looked after the UMs best.

Once you have checked in and you are airside you abdicate all responsibility.  There is nothing you can do except wait.  I like to do this with glass of wine or tea, depending on the time of day, a book and  my eyes.  Just watching people, wondering where they are going and why they are going there.

With  my newfound minimalist eye I have expanded my people watching to luggage watching.  We travelled with three children under three (we have twins).  We travelled with a toddler and me heavily pregnant.   We did all of that long distance to countries that you could not reach by a direct flight from the UK so we had the added fun of crossing Paris, usually in rush hour.  Believe me, even with all of that you really do not need to bring the entire nursery with you (and that was in the days before iPads).  My eldest daughter, then aged 2 occupied herself from Newcastle to London, London to Paris and Paris to Pointe a Pitre with a tiny doll about 2″ tall and an empty meal bowl which became dollie’s bed.  Her younger sister, a couple of years later,  suffering from a nasty gastric upset that materialised out of the blue and involved copious vomiting was kept occupied by a dolls house made by her sisters out of a cardboard shoebox in our hand luggage and furniture and people drawn on scrap paper.

I have watched people check in monumental cases and then take a pretty enormous wheeled carry on bag on the plane.  Yes it is possible that they are emigrating or taking vital supplies to cousins overseas …..  But ALL of them?  No I don’t think so.

It strikes me that if stuff gets in the way of living, which I have discovered it does, then surely stuff gets in the way of a holiday.  Surely a holiday is a time to relax, to let go, to try new experiences.  How on earth can you do that if you are lumbered with luggage you have to keep packing and unpacking and keeping track of and washing…..

lessons learned

~ Gillie ~ 18 Comments

So I have been living out of a suitcase for three weeks.  I brought too much.  I could have got away with half of what I brought with  me.  But every lesson learned is a good lesson.

Time out, and certainly time travelling (as in time spent travelling not the Tardis variety) gives you plenty of time to knit and to think.  Time spent living out of a suitcase gives you plenty of time to think about what you should have left behind.

When I was packing I kept to a simple colour palette.  That was good.  There was not one item in my case that could  not have been worn with practically every other item.  Lesson learned: cull all those items in my wardrobe that can’t go with at least 50% of the rest of my wardrobe (wedding dresses/ballgowns should you need them are exempt from this rule 🙂 )

I love linen, bamboo and cashmere, I love loose deconstucted shapes (think Japanese).  Lesson learned: cull the items that I don’t love to feel against my skin.  I would rather have one fabulous cashmere jumper than three okay scratchy wool ones.

I wear shoes for comfort.  Even my “smart evening” shoes have to pass this test.  Yet despite a huge shoe cull I have shoes I never wear not because they hurt but because they aren’t comfy.  Lesson learned:  I do not need five pairs of black suede shoes and those pink peep toe wedge sandals are not comfy whereas the blue suede peeptoe sandals I could wear all day and not notice.  Lesson learned:  if you don’t wear them then don’t keep them.

None of this is rocket science.  Most of this I knew already.  But still there lurk things in our house that need to go.  Our children our growing up and in a couple of years they will all have left home.  Our house is too big for two.  We need to move somewhere more practical and somewhere a little closer to civilisation.  Something was holding me back.  I didn’t want to move into Durham.  Then we had the Eureka moment, there was no reason we had to move into Durham.  We could move anywhere we wanted.  With that thought in mind it has become easy (at least in my mind) to shed even more.  I want to start the rest of my life in a free flowing space, without the millstone of stuff I don’t love, need or admire.

This is pretty much all I have worn for 3 1/2 weeks.

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shaken not stirred

~ Gillie ~ 11 Comments

We are one week into our trip and the capsule wardrobe is holding up well.  We did have to make one purchase, a windcheater each, which we really ought to have thought to bring with us.  We went to see the penguins on Phillip Island and whilst the wind was not that cold, I think we might have struggled a bit without them, and bearing in mind the inclement weather in Melbourne I am sure we will get plenty of use for them.  As you can see – we could have done with them on day one!

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The first challenge the wardrobe got was when the Boss announced that the dress code for the conference cocktail party yesterday and dinner tonight was “A Touch of Bond”.  This is in honour of the the Designing 007 – 50 Years of Bond  exhibition at The Melbourne Museum where the dinner is being held tonight.  It is a little ironic as  my father was the lawyer for Eon Productions for the first 14 Bond films and I grew up with Bond so to speak.  However, memories of Pinewood Studios were not on my mind as I worked out how I was going to get around this little hiccough.

However, I am nothing if not inventive.  White trousers, white jacket, bronze satin top, heels and my essential Butler and Wilson Union Jack brooch and earrings and I thought I might just pass for a mature Bond Girl.  So you can imagine that I was marginally put out when the Boss called out “Come on Miss Moneypenny”.

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Tonight I swap the trousers and top for a silk spotty dress and flash the Butler and Wilson 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

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the arrival of the capsule wardrobe

~ Gillie ~ 9 Comments

The minimalism is being put to the test.  At the end of the week the Boss and I are going to Australia for a month.  He is working, I am going along for the ride.  And if you are planning on popping over to relieve us of the few things I haven’t already got rid of  you might like to know that all three dogs and all three daughters are remaining at home.  I am  not sure which are more frightening.

I digress, back to the travel planning.  There are some things that I have to take:

  • Paperwork (passports, visas etc.)
  • Guidebooks (can’t be doing with them on kindle, I need an actual book)
  • Camera, pocket lumix and DSLR
  • Kindle
  • Knitting
  • Laptop
  • Telephone
  • Toiletries
  • Swimwear
  • Glasses
  • Sunglasses
  • Hearing aids

After that I have to move on to clothes, and clothes for a climate that is quite different to the one I am experiencing right now and to last me a month.  Silly though it sounds it really is quite hard to select thick jumpers when the temperature is in the thirties and jolly difficult to select light tops when it is minus two (as it was this morning).

But all this wardrobe weeding and recording of what I wear has paid off.  I have a capsule wardrobe that incorporates several evening receptions, casual day time and beach!  Colours are white, cream and navy and comprise:

  • White linen trousers
  • Navy linen trousers
  • Pink capri pants
  • Short navy shirt
  • Maxi grey jersey skirt
  • Blue & navy dress
  • Cream and navy dress
  • White long sleeved t shirt
  • White short sleeved t shirt
  • Navy & white spotty t shirt
  • Navy strapless t shirt
  • White strapless t shirt
  • Navy cotton shirt
  • Navy & white chiffon top
  • Bronze metallic evening top
  • White jersey jacket
  • Navy cotton cardigan
  • Red smart shoes
  • Navy wedges
  • Black fitflops
  • Orange scarf

 

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I know that for a true  minimalist this is far from ideal, it isn’t carry on luggage.  But for me this is a huge step and I am dead chuffed 🙂