Back to School

Clarity and closets rarely mix. It was both wrong and sad when I found that I liked my maternity wardrobe better than my real clothes. Of course, these days that doesn’t mean pastel blue checked frocked blouses with bunnies on them, but rather sleek, fitted little nothings in black, red, turquoise and paisleyed or swirled polka-dots. Friends from everywhere sent me choice bits from their own round-bellyed days and voila – cuts and colors I would have never attempted on my own. It was about time for that wake-up call. Something had to be done with the graying collection of black t-shirts, the fraying cuffs and seams of seven-year old white collared shirts, and the sweaters that had never quite fit right. Now that I’ve given up the maternity collection, I miss those colors and patterns like you miss curried lamb after eating bologna sandwiches.

Henry David Thoreau once said, “I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” School kids everywhere often sympathize, though for my three sisters and I this was an exciting season of housekeeping on our wardrobes. After the flurry of trying on everything last stitch in our closets, there was the haggling on shopping day for the jeans, shoes and coolest shirt you would live in for the next year. As the eldest, I suffered from usually handing down more than I could get out of tight budgets, but with some flexibility, a deft needle and a yen for vintage (old) clothes, I managed a middling sartorial presence – nothing brilliant, but passable. Thank God for Cindi Lauper and Madonna. Back in 1985, you could literally wear anything and get away with it.

Several jobs later, I found I had nonetheless never properly learned to shop. The Air Force gave me several suits it wanted me to be proud in, my sister gave me her collection of khakis that she outgrew in high school, Mom bought me my first work clothes and by the time I hit grad school, everything just had to be clean and not look like I’d slept in it. But then, up in New York, hip meant anything not overly pressed, matching or untextured – read suburban. We were intellectuals, we could sometimes be rumpled; it added panache to otherwise distressed wardrobes. With a debt load into five figures and no end in sight, we tended to react with neurotic caution. When we blew our cool (and our loan check) on clothing, it had to last. I still have half the stuff from that ill-advised Limited expedition nine years ago, but then I had a friend with a company discount and chose classic pieces.

Then last week, I returned from my California trip wherein I’d lived out of half of a carry-on suitcase, the other half being devoted to Connor’s onesies, rice cereal and little shoes. I had used the same strategy for when I packed for Europe: set out what you think you need and put half of it back. It works every time and you find you don’t overpack. I found I could have cut even that in half. What half of a carryon case teaches you about your clothes is that you have far too many of them sitting around that you don’t use. I came home and raked my closets for all the detritus and tore four garbage bags off the shelves and racks. I find, too, that I haven’t really lost anything, just the crap that was too old, the wrong size or that I’d never really liked.

I’d like to do the same for the rest of my house: broken-handled cups, the gadgets that don’t work, the pasta that’s been in the cupboard for a year, camping gear that we didn’t use last time and probably won’t ever use, knickknacks in drawers, old magazines. I used to do this every time I moved. As a student that was about every 2-four years. Having settled, I find that a clattering layer of plaque has collected in the cupboards and drawers of my home, obscuring those things I do use and making my head feel dusty and cluttered. So the ritual is the same even if the collection has telescoped from shoes, clothes and hair ribbons to blenders and candleholders.

There something still in my internal clock that clears the junk, cleans house, irons shirts, sharpens pencils, lays in canned veggies and a new box of tea and gets ready for the new school year. Summer’s been wonderful, but its scattered loose logics give way to an orderly readiness, the crisp white shirt effect, of the Fall. Of Excel spreadsheets of new budgets, of new files for the piles on the desk (baby sitters, receipts) and of new tasks and resolutions: Finish the bloody manuscript of the book, don’t stay up too late, start looking at pre-schools, test-drive a larger car. Each year’s ritual is a preparation for growth, a clearing of the deck for the next challenge. It makes me wonder whether the divestiture of things isn’t immediately connected to growth.

So my job this fall is to throw out a lot of junk and buy one sleek, sassy dress that I love. Maybe two. What the heck, I’ve got a lot of space in my closet now.