Spring Cleaning

About a week ago, I decided to clean out my closet. Brimming with clothes, not a empty hanger in site, and I had  nothing to wear!

The pieces that didn't make the cut all had something in common: they were my style, per se, but something about them didn't "wow" me. The sweater, for instance, that was tossed aside was a gorgeous mint color with clear mint colored buttons. I love bling and mint, but the problem for this piece was that the sleeves were long - I don't like long-sleeve sweaters since I get warm easy. 

Like the sweater above, most of these clothes only were worn a handful of times, but I kept overlooking them in my closet when I would go to get dressed because the fit was off or it was something that I liked three years ago, but just wasn't striking a chord with me anymore. And, I felt guilt about getting rid of them because I might wear them someday.

So, the time came and I took no mercy. I got rid of about 25 articles of clothing, and when I shoved them in a bag headed for the Goodwill, I didn't feel bad!

As luck would have it, my friend Court  (my twinnie), who people confuse me for all the time because we are the same height etc., came over for St. Patty's day and I gave her the bag of clothes. She got some great scores!

It's nice now to not have to see all those things that I wasn't going to wear ever or wear and not feel at my best. Now, I have a closet with less clutter but more options. 

I also notice that now when I go out, I won't just run into a store and buy five or more articles of clothing because there's a sale. Most times, I only really love one or two items, but feel compelled to buy the other items because there is a sale (many of the items I cleaned of the closet fit into this category).

My black cardi and cream blouse are two of my go-to staples. In this pic I've paired the two with a
yellow and black pencil skirt and a cheery lemon colored necklace - perfect for spring and the office!

It also occurred to me that I have way more options if I wash my clothes more often. I work for a water district, and using water efficiently is very important to me, so I was only doing laundry once every two to three weeks; however, it seriously limited my options of what I could wear because a lot of my mix and match staples, like my black cardi and cream blouse (above) were always in the laundry.

Washing laundry about every week will still give me a pretty full load and provide me with more clothing options without having to buy more clothes.

Owning and buying less and washing more: the key to my spring cleaning success!

Making do...

It's one of those months where our paychecks conveniently fall just a few days out of sync with our mortgage and other automatic payments, meaning we are down to nada. Of course, we have money in our long-term savings, retirement and other accounts but, in my opinion, those are always OFF LIMITS, so we made do when it came to tonight's meal.

Morgan smartly suggested that we make tots and drench them in the leftover cheese dip that we usually use for tortilla chips (excellent side!). Then, we used our last three pieces of bread, including the end, to make bacon, turkey and swiss sandwiches. Heaven on a plate! Add in some Moscato Port that tastes oh-so-divine and that was dinner.

I write this post not to feel bad about the fact that I don't have any spending money for the next few days, but rather to reflect on the fact that making do is sometimes the best thing to do. Of course, I could've put some dinner on my credit card or taken money out of savings, but this meal was perfect. And, we were challenged to think outside our normal meals to come up with something fabulous.

And, that's what happens in life. We often get so stuck in buying more and more instead of using our creativeness to come up with something fantastic using items we already own. This principle can be applied to food, home design, clothing and basically anything else.

I will use our little meal tonight to reflect upon how much I already have and be thankful for all that I have been given.