I look in my closet and I’m so uninspired.
For the better part of the last two years I’ve been unemployed. Ouch! That’s so hard to hear, even if I’m only hearing it in my head because I’m not talking out loud as I’m writing this. But it was even harder to experience.
That time was filled with so much stress about when I was going to get another job, and how I was going to pay my bills, that buying new clothes and prioritizing self-expression through my outward appearance never crossed my mind. I actually can’t even remember the last time I went to the mall. Oh, yes, I can. It was a little over a year ago, to buy a belt to spiffy up a dress I was going to wear to an interview. But, before that – beat’s me.
When I eventually landed a job last October, I did a little online shopping and physically went to DSW. I ended up buying two pairs of shoes, which, by the way, I’m still wearing to this day. I lost that job soon thereafter, and haven’t gotten any more shoes since.
Before all that went down, I used to flip through magazines, check out fashion blogs and scroll Instagram, looking for the latest styles, or just something cute and interesting that I could try to recreate. But even then, I’ve never had a lot of clothes. Show me the tiniest closet in your house, and I probably don’t have enough clothes to fill it.
Same story with my shoes. Right now, I have about 10 pairs of shoes, and I only wear four regularly: two flats, and two sneakers. Part of the reason my shoe count is so low is because of my shoe size. At size 11, cute and comfy shoes are so hard to find that when I do come across a pair I like, I just wear them until they either look really bad, or fall apart – literally. I’ve actually had a couple of shoes fall apart while I was walking in them.
Now I have a job. It doesn’t pay much, but it’s enough to cover some bills, and, if I stretch it right, have some change left over for Jack N the Box curly fries. And therein lies part of my problem. Now that I have a paycheck again, I’ve been buying the fast food that I couldn’t afford when I was out of a job.
But when I get dressed to go somewhere on my days off, or even to work for that matter, most of the options in my closet just don’t do it for me anymore. Thankfully, I have a good sense of style, so I’ve been able to collect a few timeless pieces that have allowed me to put together a few stylish outfits here and there, even though they are years old. I think the oldest piece in my closet is a pair of denim trousers that I got from the Gap back in 2007. The latest is a stripped-cotton tee that I got from TJMaxx about two months ago. I love them both. But overall, my wardrobe is a bore.
That’s when it dawned on that my egg roll and ice cream money might be better served going towards new clothes. I mean, ‘cause food is cheap until you keep buying it. That $50 I spend, over five days, on Popeye’s and pad thai could be a totally new outfit from TJ Maxx.
Don’t get me wrong about food – I love food. Food is one of the great joys of my life. But food is such a temporal experience. You spend $10 and within 10 minutes it’s gone – well, at least the way I eat. But I have a pair of camouflage pants I bought at the Gap seven years ago, on clearance for $7, and they still look good today. Granted I don’t come across deals like that too often, but even if I would have spent $200 on them, it’s seven years later. That still would have been a better deal than some of this fast food I’ve been consuming.
So lately, I’ve been fancying cutting back on some of the fast food in favor of fashion. And not just fashion for fashion sake. I’ve never been one that’s too big on trends. But fashion for self-expression sake. Like, I want my clothes to say something about my personality other than I have little money and I like food.
To do this, I decided to give myself a clothes budget, because, well, I have little money and I like food. I challenged myself to buy nothing over $10. I figured I could find shirts and pants for that amount on the clearance rack or on final sale, but I was sorely wrong.
While I did get the aforementioned stripped cotton tee at TJ Maxx for $9.99 before the tax, deals like that are hard to come by. Plus, the amount of time it takes to go rummaging a sale rack and going through all the items at a discount store, ultimately, for me, isn’t worth the low price. Like the saying goes, time is money, and saving $20 isn’t worth it if it takes me five hours to do it. I ain’t got time to be spending several hours going to multiple stores in hopes of something that may not even be there.
So I guess that means I’ve got to come up with another plan.
I can start with staying away from the drive-thrus and vending machines, and disciplining myself.
Because I think it’s time I start putting a little more effort into how I present myself to the world, and more importantly, how I present myself to me.
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