Cleaning out My Closet

I just finished cleaning out one of my closets. I am tired, wheezy and my nose is running. But, it had to be done. I’m starting a new job on Monday so I went shopping for new clothes yesterday, and I needed to sort through my old clothes and see what I have that I can wear to the office. I packed up a lot of clothes for Goodwill and threw out a bunch of shoes.

Cleaning out my closet was also a (short) trip down memory lane. I had done pretty well in clearing out a lot of clothes when I first moved to this apartment 6 years ago.

(Although there was one item I got rid of that I really wish I hadn’t – a nightgown with a big blue cat on it that my mother gave me when I was a junior in high school. I remember seeing it when I dumped a huge garbage bag of clothes into the Salvation Army dumpster in Jersey City and thinking, “I should grab that.” But by the time the thought was formed, the nightgown was covered up and I let it go. I wish I had saved it.)

There were several times I looked at a skirt or pair of pants and thought “I actually got into these once!” How sobering to think I haven’t worn (er…haven’t been ABLE to wear) some of these things in over 7 years. Of course, I kept a lot of those kinds of things – kicky, flirty skirts I used to traipse around in my first summer in NY, when I was buying clothes like crazy because I couldn’t believe I was actually in NY and could buy kicky, flirty skirts off the rack.

I did get rid of a shirt with a rather dubious history. I think the last time I wore it was 7 years ago. It was a dusty rose short-sleeve, button-up denim shirt that I work with a pair of black pants. I remember feeling down in the dumps that day and, while walking to the PATH with the BF, remarked, “I feel frumpy.” To which he responded, “Well, you look frumpy.” And to think he couldn’t understand why I didn’t speak to him for the rest of the day. Sheesh.

I chucked a bunch of shoes, too – mostly black shoes that were unfixable in some way, like peeling pleather or something. I did hang on to all of my dance shoes, even the 14-year-old jazz shoes that have been resoled 5 times. I also held on to my favorite pair of vinyl platform shoes I bought in ’97 and wore in my first off-off-Broadway show and a pair of green and black faux alligator-skin Doc Martens. I’ll wear them again someday. I also have a pair of over-the-knee black suede boots that the BF convinced me to buy in the first month we were dating. The cuff is made of multi-colored diamond-shaped pieces of suede - think harliquinesque. He swore I could wear them when we went dancing.

We have never gone dancing.



I used to be such a clothes/shoe horse that it’s odd that I don’t feel any real attachment to the clothes I got rid of – just relief that I’ve got some space again. Does that mean I’m getting old or just getting realistic?

Nah, I think it means that I’ve watched too many episodes of
Clean Sweep!