Resolution #1: Live and Let Live
Let's be honest, it's hard to get too worked up about anything when you're either on vacation or preparing for vacation and for me, June was all about summer vacation. It was a joyful, busy month and there was no room for angst. I continue to remind myself to live and let live when dealing the decisions of myself and others, but it doesn't seem as necessary to my sanity as it did at the beginning of the year when I made the resolution. Is this a mark of personal growth? Does the increased exposure to sunshine make me a nicer, more even-tempered person? Perhaps, but I don't mind living the next six months with this resolution still ringing in my ear.
Resolution #2: The Great American Apparel Fast
I feel like I've slipped over the last couple of months. My goal was to cease all clothing and home purchases for the entire year. I don't believe I've purchased a single thing for the house. In fact, we unloaded a ton of stuff at our garage sale. Success. Yet, here's my list of clothing:
--In March I bought a pair of shoes and a dress. (The shoes were a solid Salvation Army purchase, I wore them all Spring. However, I have never worn the dress and plan to give to my friend Jen.)
--In May, I got sucked in at Marshall's and bought a pair of electric blue shorts (I've worn them several times and have them on right now as I write), a floral dress (I wear this all the time) and an adorable dress with a lace overlay (so cute, yet I've never worn it).
--And in June, I bought a new dress (Target, $24.99) for the garden party we hosted for Jake's co-workers. And since I was at Target breaking my resolution anyway, I threw in a little sweater shirt (on sale for $12.99), which I'm wearing right now. I know why I bought this dress. I was nervous about hosting our party and felt like I needed something new to give me a boost of confidence. It's a cute dress, but I'm pretty sure I tried on every cute dress at Target on the morning of the party. I did not enjoy that hour of my life.
Part of a "fast," I believe, is that you find out things about yourself that you didn't already know. These things are brought to the surface when you deprive yourself of what you need or think you need and there is more room to see the truth. I think the garden party dress was a great example of how I sometimes mask insecurity with a new outfit. Ouch.
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After six months of the Great American Apparel Challenge, another thing that I have gained is a bit of clarity about my relationship to the clothes that are already in my closet and how few items of clothing I actually wear. It was clear after a few months that I really only wear two of the seven pairs of jeans that I own. So, after the garage sale, I gave four pairs away. I also recognized a rotation of maybe six shirts that I wear consistently, so I gave piles of basic, solid-colored t-shirts away. I love wearing dresses, but even amid those I have clear favorites and probably gave a half-dozen dresses away after the garage sale. So far, I haven't missed a thing.
To clarify, I would definitely not consider myself someone who has a ton of clothes or who likes to shop; in fact, I'm fairly minimal and really have never particularly enjoyed shopping. And yet, you should have seen the amount of clothing that the Salvation Army truck hauled away after the garage sale. I have a friend who has told me she always struggles with the idea that if she has two pairs of shoes, she is stealing one from the poor. I can't help but feel that pain. Also, more selfishly, the clutter just takes up too much of my brain-space and I am tired of sorting through piles on my closet shelves to find what I'm looking for. So that's that.
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I realize that I'm going on and on about this particular resolution, and you can feel free to stop reading at any moment, but the first six months of this clothing fast have been really interesting. In fact, I recently read a book called
OVERDRESSED: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion and am planning to interview the author for an article that I'm hoping to write on this subject.
For a long time, we've all been talking about the global economic and environmental implications of the way we buy our food and the idea of buying local and/or organic has been gaining a ton of traction, even in the mainstream, over the last half-dozen years. I think about our own local farmers' market and how exponentially it has grown since we moved to our community five years ago.
Overdressed is about the economic and environmental impact of how and where we buy our clothing. The author, Elizabeth L. Cline, writes about fast fashion and how we are living in a world where fashion is constantly changing. Never before have trends been so accessible to us so quickly. However, much of this trendy clothing that we consume is made overseas in shoddy factories where workers are not paid a livable wage. Also, these clothes are quickly and poorly constructed. Quickly so that they can hit the shelves of fast-fashion stores (which admittedly include some of my favorites: H&M, Target, Forever 21) and poorly constructed so that they can be sold cheaply (I can't remember the last time I spent more than $25/30 on something). Rather than mending these clothes or having them properly cleaned after we wear them, it's easier for the consumer to simply haul them away because 1. they're falling apart anyway and 2. we know that we can buy something new and more up-to-the-minute for relatively little money.
All of this fascinates my anti-consumer, anti-throwaway sensibility. As I began this clothing/household fast, I knew at a gut level that I consuming more than my share of resources. Cline confirmed my hunch. It's a fantastic book that has given me a lot to think about over the next six months of the fast.
Check out the book
here.
