Losing, Leaving and Letting Go: When Clothes Die

What do you do when old clothes get...well, too old to wear? I end up keeping them, and my closet slowly brims to overflowing. Dresses that are too small (last worn when I was eight or so), suits that are adorable but don't fit, and old blouses that are comfortable and stained. Slowly the slide to the back of my closet, hiding other more wearable clothing and taking up room. What to do about them? I finally decided the other day that I was going to be cold hearted and take out all of those old things and either give them away or trash them.

I failed. I went through about two feet worth of clothing, which has now been sorted into the appropriate receptacle. There's about as much that I left there, too attached to to throw out. Maybe I'll fit into them again (ha), or maybe someday I'll have a little girl of my own that will wear it (double ha). There's one shirt in particular that I'm considering digging out of my give-away bag and saving. Its just one little children's turtleneck, right?? Its incredibly cute...more importantly, it has a story with it. Many women get attached to jewelry. I don't wear that much jewelry, so I don' really grow attached to it. But I have fuzzy feelings associated with this shirt. So, it might just disappear from the give-away bag before i becomes the given-away bag.

This raggy skirt is another sad piece. I love this skirt, and I've worn it to all sorts of events. It has memories. It gives me the warm fuzzies. Nothing bad has ever happened while I wore this skirt. It was fun. It was versatile. And it had over 100 safety pins in it, since if I sewed the tears, they only became worse. So I pinned each hole, and slowly, the number of pins increased as the tears got bigger. I could turn it inside out and have a perfect Goth/Punk mix. But, sadly, it is now getting retired. To the trash. No one could use it, it wouldn't do to try to fix it.

I've come up with a system to start determining what clothing I do not wear. And I'm promising myself that, in a year, I will go through and get rid of alllllll the items that don't fit or are never worn.

But then, again, I promised myself that last year, too.