Fashion forward?

 This week I wore dress pants for the first time in 4-ish months. For a meeting. With another person, in the same room, at work. All very remarkable.

Anyway, I've been thinking about this clothes thing a lot, because I have a closet full of work clothes (business dress--tops, pants) and dresses that I'm not wearing at all. I don't go into work, I don't go to church, so I don't need to wear them. And shoes. I have basically 2 pairs I've worn in the last 4 months, because why wear shoes if you don't leave the house? Even when I do laundry or something, I go barefoot, because the grass is nice and lovely.

But it's not just not wearing the dress clothes. It's the fact that I have a wardrobe of dress pants, and then I have tops to go with them, but I have winter tops (long sleeves) and summer tops (short sleeves). And same for casual wear. There are jeans and long sleeves for winter, shorts and short sleeves for summer. And pajamas--winter pajamas, summer pajamas. On top of that, the laundromat at my place gives you 4 options for washing clothes: gentle/cold, normal/warm, permanent press/warm, and something or other on hot. I can't choose the size, so I'm using the same amount of water no matter what, so I try to have enough clothing to make the best use of the machines every time I do laundry. Partly to make it worth the money I'm spending and partly to be environmentally friendly, both of which seem like worthy causes. 

But, honestly. That is SO MUCH CLOTHING. It's madness! Back in the day, people owned what, 3-4 outfits? Maybe? I'm not saying I want to live back in the day, because they also didn't have a washing machine, but why do we have to have so many clothes? I feel overwhelmed by it. And guilty. And fed up, especially when I realize that I'm wearing maybe 1/4 of the clothes I own. Some of it is a geographical thing, obviously, because I live in a place where there are 4 seasons. But do I really need to own that much clothing? It's crazy! Another part of it is my place of employment. I used to be able to dress more casual, so a pair of jeans and a dressier shirt, which definitely kept the number of pants I needed down. I can probably also get rid of a few pairs of pants without hurting my laundry budget or the environment too much, too. And maybe tops. But I don't know for sure, because things aren't normal right now, so I don't know what I'd be wearing if I were going into the office like the world used to do. 

Either way, it's a lot of clothes. Excessive, I dare say. I'm not saying let's go back to 3-4 outfits total. But I do think I, and maybe all of us, could get by on fewer clothes. And shoes. And maybe not worry about what other people think of us when we wear the same things more than once in 2 weeks. And hopefully that won't put people in Bangladesh out of work. 

Aargh! Sometimes, the 21st century is way too complicated.