Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Too much of everything. Or too little?

It's autumn. You can just feel it in the air. I was up the allotment about ten days ago and though it was warm and sunny you could just feel that edge in the air that meant it was no longer high summer. I was right too. The weather has really turned in the last week, despite it still being August. Cold days ahead.

One job that always has to get done as soon as the kids have gone back to school is turning out the wardrobes. Summer clothes have to be sorted out, judged on size, condition and possibility of wear next year and dealt with accordingly. Keep, pass on, charity shop, textile recycling bin at the dump? The Keep pile is always the smallest. Then I have to look through the storage boxes in the attic for each child, the ones where I keep the stock of larger clothes that I've bought ahead in the sales, kept from an older sibling or had passed on to them to wear. Only then will I go out and buy anything for the new season. Mean, moi? Of course....

Anyway once I'd done this I thought I'd better do my clothes next. I'm not supposed to outgrow clothes of course but I like to put the summer stuff away and pull the warmer garments out of their summer storage. This year though there is a problem...

A couple of summers ago I was the lightest I'd been for many years. I'd got my act together and lost about two and a half stone...thats 35 pounds for the US viewers. I was still fat of course but I was less fat, I'd gone down a couple of sizes and had to buy lots of new clothes. For the record I'm pretty boring in the way I dress, with jeans and tops the normal sort of everyday wear. but it was nice to buy new stuff. One summer later I'd put 7 lbs of it back on again, then I got a new Mirena fitted and put on another 10 pounds in the two weeks immediately after. The new clothes most emphatically did not fit any more! Since then I've put on another couple of pounds and though I've managed to stop this upwards trend and even reverse it a tad, I'm still 20 pounds above what I was two years ago at this point. Which is still 15 pounds less than my top weight, but it's annoying.

As I said I seem to have got a grip on it and I may even have managed to get going downwards again. In the meantime, there is the clothes problem. Practically nothing fits. I have quite a lot of nice stuff in one or two sizes too small. I have clothes that fit me now, a combination of leftover items not thrown out when I was still losing weight, which are a bit shabby, and a few items I've reluctantly bought as the weight crept back on again. So I decided today to have a bit of a wardrobe cull, to put away all the too small stuff and get rid of all the too shabby items at the same time as I changed over the seasonal clothes. I don't have huge amounts of accessable wardrobe space and I thought this would be a good way to free up some of this.

Well.....

Yes, I now have wardrobe and drawer space. It would be fair to say I have Too Much wardrobe and drawer space. Thing is, I hardly have anything to actually wear at the moment, not for the coming winter anyway. I have boxes of nice clothes for both summer and winter, and a huge "out" pile but not very much at all that fits me! And I don't really feel like buying new clothes for the size I am.

Advice?

Yeah, I know, go out and buy myself a few good basics that fit properly and that I feel comfortable in, to see me through till I lose the weight again. (Hopefully.) No point in feeling fat AND my clothes not fitting. But it's annoying, you know????

4 comments:

blueadt said...

I've lost 5 stone so know EXACTLY what you mean. With our current de-cluttering I emptied a box that had been in the loft since we moved in 2 1/2 yrs ago & found 3 suits that had been too small & were now only just wearable/soon to be too big. I only have a few clothes that fit me now & just wash & wear & get rid once too big. So yes get a few things & get back onto the wagon, you can do it!

Helen said...

I know, it's annoying, but that's what eBay is for. Masses of unworn stuff if you're fussy, and worn once if you're not. I'd be lost without it :)

Marissa said...

Exactly- Ebay! You're on the right track, and just think of all that space you can fill with small clothes when you get there!
I can't believe you've switched out clothes already...we are still (or I should say, finally!) enjoying summer weather here in Maine. I'm hoping for 70's thru September! (She says while rocking back and forth, eyes spinning wildly, sucking her thumb, thinking of the long winter ahead!)

Daisy said...

Oh you sound so much more organised than me! I've just had to be ruthless and clear out a load of clothes (gone from being ridiculously skinny to a fairly reasonable size!) which has made me think about which clothes I'm buying and why. And I'm not very good at buying useful clothes in a sensible way!