A Minor Mistake

When I first reviewed Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I mentioned that I was already an old hand at cleaning out my closet. I had already been accustomed to going through my closet every few months and following tips like those found on Into Mind to identify what could be donated or thrown away. I never made a single "mistake" in terms of accidentally getting rid of something and eventually regretting it. After reading Kondo's book, I've become a bit more aggressive with my tidying-up, and that has recently resulted in my first real mistake while getting a bit overzealous with putting together my next Thredup bag last week.

I bought the pictured Ann Taylor top about a year ago and wore it a few times, mostly to work during the summer. It isn't a very summery color or style, but it was light enough in texture. It definitely didn't pass muster under Kondo's "does it spark joy" criteria. Practically every time I wore it, I noticed how the satiny-textured polyester of the front panel (the back panel was a different more viscose-textured material) seemed to attract stains from antiperspirant and who knows what else at a remarkable rate. The embellished neck didn't work that well with many of my necklaces. I wear many black skirts to work, and I found that I didn't like the navy and blue combination much. Into the Thredup bag it went.

Now, however, I find myself thinking (for several days in a row) about whether I made a mistake. I didn't love the top, but I suspect that it is normal enough for one's work wardrobe to be stocked with quite a few items one doesn't love, for necessity's sake. I would still have worn it to work with reasonable frequency and I can't guarantee that the next Ann Taylor or Loft work top I buy (at an average price of $25 or so each) would be better than this one. 

Given how long I've been editing my closet and how many pieces I've gotten rid of, this isn't exactly a cautionary tale. I still have close to a 99% success rate, most likely. (I never counted how many pieces I sent away, so I can't be scientific about the numbers!) Have you ever regretted throwing away, donating, or selling anything while editing your closet? 

Review: The Laundress Products

 

Earlier this year, I mentioned that one of my personal style resolutions was to start taking better care of my clothing and to use alternatives to dry-cleaning whenever possible. I still dry-clean my suit separates and some of my nicer dresses (and am still a bit leery of putting "dry-clean only" labeled viscose items through the wash). Otherwise, I now machine-wash many a polyester or cotton business-casual dress that I previously thought was dry-clean only and hand-wash all of my sweaters and silk tops. I've been using products from The Laundress for about two months now, and I thought it'd be a good time for a review.

I picked up the Stain Solution and the All-Purpose Bleach Alternative to use in combination to try and freshen up some well-loved white clothes that had gotten progressively dingier over the last few years of normal machine-washing. I confess that I'm not always the biggest stickler for separating most of my lights and darks, outside of keeping red items and white items separate.

The instructions recommend making a paste of the Stain Solution and Bleach Alternative and applying it to stains before soaking the item in hot water. I've used the mixture on antiperspirant stains and other marks on silk tops, cotton tees, and polyester-blend dresses, and it has done a good job with everything, with a few small exceptions. I had one cotton skirt with some mysterious stains of unknown age and origin (a previous dry-cleaning didn't get rid of the stains either), and the Stain Solution-Bleach Alternative blend wasn't able to get it out either. When I purchase from The Laundress again, I might want to buy the Wash and Stain Bar to see if it makes a difference on particularly set-in stains.

For whites clothes, I then rinse out the stain-removal mixture and soak the item again in hot water and the Bleach Alternative before eventually throwing the item into the washing machine with my next load of laundry. Combining the two steps was enough to brighten up the white clothes that had gone dingy. 

On Finances and Aspirational Shopping

 

My friends and I sometimes chat about wealth in the context of our classmates at graduate school. I'll be the first to confess that I think about these things a lot more than is entirely polite or sensible: what people are wearing, what people are buying, and what I might like to buy in order to "keep up" (usually in terms of things I might wear to work). The costs of tuition and costs of living in NYC are both substantial. It is probably natural enough that I am insatiably curious about how people can afford certain things such as living in a more desirable neighborhood far away from student housing, an Equinox membership supplemented by a generous dose of SoulCyle classes, a Celine bag here, a pair of Charlotte Olympia shoes there, and a few Theory dresses just because it was a bad day (each of these things refers to a different person). It is probably not at all classy of me to wonder about these things, but I confess that I can't help it. 

Sometimes that thinking and speculation might start to look like judgement and, implicitly, a desire to shame or take the moral high ground. I would never, by the way, actually claim the moral high ground on anything consumption related. I took one long European vacation as a student, knowing full well that I live largely on loans. It wasn't wise. I own at least a few expensive items while my loans render my net worth solidly in the red to the tune of... well I won't get into specifics. What I can say is, it will be at least a half decade before I can conceivably finish paying off my student loans. That is a very ambitious timeline.

So I don't ever mean to imply my own moral superiority when it comes to these questions. I look closely at my budget daily and look even closer before making major spending decisions, some of which are still less wise than others. I am comfortable with the decisions I make for myself. I know that I cannot fully know and don't have the right to know about anyone else's finances.

 

Relatedly, I am also not immune to the desire to consume in order to aspire to be someone else, to fake it 'til I make it. My own experiences with heart-stopping, "what did I just do" expenditures were not at the Rick Owens leather jacket price point. Sometimes, even a Longchamp tote (purchased at a much cheaper price than the American MSRP in London while the GBP was weak that semester I studied abroad, I'll have you know) can embody something much like the "distillation of everything [one has] ever found seductive about not only living in [insert setting of choice here] but the prospect of belonging there, too." Sometimes a too expensive for you normally item can make you "feel thinner, taller, and infinitely more interesting." That's certainly what the marketers want.

It isn't a good thing to give in to that advertising and image-driven impulse, that much is obvious. What I mean to say, though, is that I understand it all too well, even if my price point and the items I long for are different. Some people I've talked to about this beg to differ, but even if my dream item is something like a Theory sheath dress or suit, that desire to shop to become a newer, better version of yourself still comes from the same place.

Can any of you relate to that article I linked about the Rick Owens leather jacket? Do any of you sometimes find yourselves curious about classmates' shopping? Maybe I am alone in overthinking these things. I do admit that it all comes from a place of relative financial privilege...

All photos via Pinterest. 

Shopping Decisions: Winter Boots

via Pinterest

It's finally starting to warm up here in New York City, which might make this post untimely. This winter has thoroughly challenged my previous assumption that a pair of rainboots and some leather boots are a sufficient winter shoe wardrobe. While friends living in places with harsher winters (in both temperature and snowfall terms) might derive amusement from how fussy I get about NYC winters, having warm dry feet for those relatively brief walks to and from the train does have considerable benefits for one's winter-time comfort.  

I'm planning out some of my major fashion purchases for the remainder of the year. One such purchase will likely be a pair of more substantial winter boots. For now, I've tentatively settled on the L.L. Bean duck boots with Goretex and Thinsulate. I actually ordered last week, which seems dramatically premature given that spring will come soon (fingers crossed). It seems premature until one notices that my size is backordered until June 29. I feel as if the Bean boots were already somewhat "trendy" in my college days (Uggs were the dominant winter boot, though). Very recently, they have encountered a new surge of popularity. For those interested in pre-ordering, it looks like they won't charge my credit card until closer to the shipping date. I won't formally list them in one of my monthly budgets until I get charged. 

I have some reservations about my purchase. I've heard a lot about the declining quality of the materials, though the company still manufactures in Maine. That being said, at least one of the alternatives I considered is almost as expensive and seems to have worse quality. I thought about buying a true snow boot from Sorel, but despite all my complaints about slushy sidewalks and cold feet, I don't think NYC conditions require true snow boots. I'd like my boots to also be suitable for less cold, less slushy days. Some reviews suggest that the Sorel boots might be heavy and difficult to walk in. The Sorel boots are cheaper, however, which could be a serious consideration, especially if the Bean boots prove to be of poor quality. If I don't like the Bean boots when they arrive, I can of course, return them.

As an aside regarding rainboots for winter, I recommend both the Tretorn and Lug brands (both go on sale on MyHabit frequently, resulting in a price of roughly $40 or $25/pair respectively). The only other brand I've tried is Target, which I do not recommend because they crack after approximately one season of wear. On the off chance that anyone has winter boot recommendations, I would love to hear them!