Pants Attack!

Today was a skinny day. I don’t know how it happened.   

Maybe it’s the fact that it’s too hot outside to consider cooking the 2 meal-able ingredients currently in my pantry (spaghetti noodles & canned crushed tomatoes), so air-popped popcorn has been my dinner more than once in the past week.  

Maybe it’s the newfound frugality born of my unemployment… the kind of frugality that allows me to stretch one large fast food burrito into 3 whole meals.  

Maybe it’s the fact that going to the grocery store is an impossibly overwhelming task since I need one of everything due to the fact that I have basically nada in the food department.  

Or maybe the stars aligned and the skinny fairies sprinkled me with magic glitter from their stingy wands.  

Whatever it was, I woke up today and thought: “Today is a great day for going through all my friggin pants!”  

So I did! And at the end of trying on Thirty Four pairs of non-jean/non-suit pants – meaning work-appropriate, work-casual, casual, dancing-appropriate, dinner-casual, and grocery store/miscellaneous category-acceptable - I want to get rid of None.  

Pile of pantalones.

This is a problem for me.  

I have owned many of these here pants for years. And for the most part they’re in great shape and often, fairly classic. Classic linen capris, check. Classic black slacks, check. Classic olive DKNY cargo thingies… check? Ok those may not be classic but they fit like a dream and probably cost me 7 bucks at Macy’s.  

You see, I weigh the cost of keeping and storing vs. the cost of replacing (taking into account the likelihood of ever wanting to replace them, which yes, is often low), and it generally comes out in favor of keeping.  

So now I will just have to actually wear all these damm pants to make their presence in my closet worthwhile. Otherwise it’s to the Get Rid Of Pile they go! It should be becoming clear by now that this purging/simplicity goal of mine will be a challenge.  

To end on a more positive note, I did in fact discover a top that I can easily let go:  

It's not you Pinky, it's me.

It’s cute but the color’s all wrong for me, the little sleeves make me look just plain dumb and the buttons basically pop open of their own free will, which means it requires an undershirt, which means I’d have to wear 2 layers of shirt in Phoenix when it’s hot out and I just want to wear something lightweight because it’s against the law to go to the grocery store naked.  So yeah, this shirt’s gotta go.

Fortunately, I have a certain sweet, petite and layer-accepting friend who might appreciate Pinky. No matter what, it is the first item of many that will be leaving my house for good in the coming months.  

I have no victory to claim over the pants, but the shirts are running scared.

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