Wednesday, June 2, 2010

purple reign

Fact: My school colors are purple and gray. Fact: I am overflowing with school spirit. Subjective observation: I own a lot of purple clothing.

At left, a small sampling of the purple, plum, grape, lavender, periwinkle, and otherwise violaceous clothing with which I bedeck myself on school days and weekends alike. I wear a lot of black and a lot of white as well as fail-proof black-and-white combos, but the purple spectrum is heavily represented in my color pieces.

Side note: Not long ago I went through a Banana Republic naturals phase but decided life was too short to wear taupe. Next to the purples, my closet is home to a pretty decent population of green-blues.

Anyway, as we prepare to move, I'm doing mini-closet excavations, paring down the bulk of my wardrobe by forcing myself to admit that I never wear a lot of this stuff. (Not this stuff. My purples get a lot of mileage. The other stuff.)

I've found that it saves hangers and closet space to pre-assemble and hang entire outfits. Jeans, mulberry top, cardigan. One hanger. Ruched cami, lavender plaid, cropped pants. One hanger. The downside is not always being able to find that cami, or having to unlayer everything if I want to wear that particular pair of jeans with something else.

Next to packing up my books, the scariest thing about moving is knowing that I will have one - count it, ONE - tiny-ass closet to shove all of my clothes in. How tiny is tiny? Compared to the current one, which I could comfortably do jumping jacks in, it's painfully small. Cub is set against bringing the free-standing closet organizer because of a lack of space in our new place.

** Life-rumination interlude**

We are in such a weird place in our lives right now. Good, but weird. It seems like "everyone" around us is on their second kid (or first divorce, or both), but we have consciously decided not to start a family until next year. Sometimes this makes me feel panicky, like I missed my bus or something, but then I remember that I asked for this time, and that there's another bus next year. I asked for this goal, this marathon, this column, this challenge. I declared it my goal, I asked for the column, and I got what I wanted. "Everyone" around us is moving into bigger places, but we are scaling back, moving into a place that is much older, and despite comparable square footage, somehow much smaller, so that we can rent out my condo and start some serious savings. Again, we asked for this, and again through the grace of God we got what we wanted. It's just such an odd feeling sometimes that the second year of our marriage is proving much humbler than our actual beginnings. While we go through all this change - this downsizing, this dance of unending compromises, this slow and continuous searching for what is truly important - I know we will be happy, but I hope that I will also be well-dressed. I'm studying these closets and having some pretty serious doubts about that.

But I know this much for sure - I will not become Taupe Girl. Ever.