Now I have identified the way to stabilise my wardrobe solutions by synthesising minimalist food with minimalist clothing (see yesterday's post), I am hopeful of much increased simplicity. I always end up with only a few things, but there's a lot of acquiring and disposing along the way.
Even with this addressed, though, and one clothing style selected, there's still quite a bit of trial and error. It takes me a lot of searching and a lot of mistakes to get the right things for my bendy, floppy body. I have several tops, but they are in only two makes and styles (Evans in a style they no longer make, and House of Bruar polo shirts) — and I've lost count of how many different kinds I've had and discarded, before accepting that these are the only ones I like.
Similarly my trousers (I have four winter ones and three summer ones) are mostly the same make (Lands End). I have one pair that is not, which was passed on to me by someone else in our house. I like them, but they make me nervous because they have a regular waistband — only partially not wholly elasticated — so all the time when I'm wearing them something worries inside that they won't always fit me and then what will I do? But apart from that pair, they are all thicker or thinner incarnations of cotton jersey fabric, soft and stretchy (but for one micro-fleece pair). A lot of skirts and trousers came and went before I settled on the present selection; dear me, yes.
Likewise my shoes. Even after I honed it down to only Birkenstocks, I messed about with those for a while — because not all Birkenstocks are born equal. I have ended up with three pairs, none of which fall off or cause blisters or hurt my ankles or do any of the things that caused me to dispose of their relatives.
Just about the only clothes I own that have stuck and stayed for ever are the things our Alice knitted me — two waistcoats, two pairs of fingerless gloves, a hat and all my socks. I've bought so many other pairs of socks, but not kept them. Either they have lumps that hurt my feet, or they're too strongly elastic (and hurt my feet) or they have too grippy a rib at the top and make my ankles swell, or they shrink in the wash and are no good any more — the problems are legion. But the ones Alice has made me are just right. They fit, they are soft and have no lumpy seams; they are perfect in every way, like Mary Poppins. Same with the gloves — I wear one pair or the other every day all through the winter, sometimes indoors as well if it's very cold. Ditto the hat.
By minimalist standards I think I have a lot of clothes. The one-bag people usually just keep a change of clothing, but my hyper-mobility and autistic tendencies combine to make me so darned fussy that it's highly inadvisable for me to leave myself in a position where I have to find a replacement garment at short notice — that process is always extremely expensive, because clothes are either perfect or I develop a strong aversion to them and can't stand them, usually after I've had them a few weeks, decided they were okay, worn and washed them, and can no longer return them. So I hang on to anything that works, even though it leaves me with a greater number of garments in my wardrobe than I'd ideally like to have. I think this is an example of finding the version of minimalism that works for you, rather than a simple number-based system. I love the idea of having just two of everything — but then what do you do if something wears out and is no longer made (that's why I have so many tops, they are a unique style that no longer exists), or if it's raining and the trousers you aren't wearing and have washed are taking days to dry?
Two pairs of Birkenstocks I didn't keep are these.
The green ones were comfy but didn't go so well with the clothes I settled on. The white ones were hard and unyielding. I gave the green ones away, but I sold the white ones on eBay — to my surprise I got as much money as I paid for them. I felt guilty about that, because it seemed too much money — though I did get them from a bargain basement kind of eBay shop in the first place, not from the actual Birkenstock website, so they were substantially cheaper.
The ones I have now are a lot better. I have one black plastic pair (like these green ones and white ones I moved on), which are good for rainy weather and the winter when it's generally wetter. The other two (a brown pair and a beige pair) have the usual Birki cork footbed with a soft suede insole and suede uppers. They are perfect for my feet, and wearing them all the time makes them soft and flexible.
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