Cleaning out my closet
My mountain of tossed-out clothes seemed like an indication of how much time and money I had wasted trying to externally make myself appear like someone I wasn’t, or settling for things that ended up being ill-fitting, ill-suited, poorly constructed, or uncomfortable; things that were ultimately not right for me.
Every woman knows this: Whenever there’s an upheaval in our lives, we seek change. Any kind of change. Just change. I’ve been feeling the urge acutely lately. Some friends have been saying that maybe my Saturn Return came early (it’s astrological mumbo-jumbo that’s a little complicated to explain, but Google can help you there if you’re curious). Some think that I’m going through a quarter-life crisis. (Possible. Likely.) Whatever it is, it feels like upheaval. The problem is that I already did the typical girl thing to do. I got a haircut — and even got my hair colored for the first time — and still didn’t feel that it was enough change for me. I needed to be somebody else.
Naturally, I turned to shopping, because sometimes there really is no better way to feel like a new person than to put something new on; something with no story and no history, something in which you can rewrite your life in a manner that you can actually live with. I must have blown through a sizeable chunk of my bank account in the name of retail therapy (sorry, bank account; sorry, Mom), and it felt really, really good. A new dilemma popped up, though: my closet was still full to bursting with stuff I wasn’t even wearing. “I have nothing to wear!†is a phrase that comes out of my mouth on a near-daily basis, and yet my closet was so overstuffed, I had multiple hangers with freshly laundered clothes dangling off the handles of my top layer of cabinets because there was just no more room to put them back in.
The Purge
I decided then that this was where catharsis would come in: The Great Purge of 2014. It was time to do some spring cleaning. I pulled every single item out of my closet — yes, every single one — and spent hours trying them all on. Then, I ruthlessly tossed out all the things that I knew deep down were just not right for me. Everything I was clinging to that no longer fit me: out. Everything that looked lovely on the hanger but fit me terribly: out. Everything that fit well but wasn’t aligned with the aesthetic I had in my head (meaning: I’d never wear it anyway): out. Everything constructed with such uncomfortable fabric that I couldn’t stand to have it on my back for more than two minutes: out. Everything that didn’t suit me in one way or another: out, out, out.
I never really used to care about what I wore; I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a fashion girl. I like to experiment with my look and try things, even though I sometimes already know before I put them on that they’re not really me. I’ve always been an emotional shopper and a sucker for bargains, so it used to be that if it’s sale season and something on the rack says 70 percent off and it’s remotely interesting to me, it goes into my closet. This has contributed to some truly terrible decisions. Like floral prints. Lovely on some, absolutely fake on me, because try as I might, and sweet as I might actually be deep inside, I can’t do sweet on the outside.
I decimated my closet by nearly half. Gone were the trying-to-be-sweet florals. Gone were most of my colors, actually. (My closet is now comprised of 60 percent black, white, and gray, 20 percent assorted jackets, 5 percent men’s button-downs I stole from my brother for “grunge days,†and 15 percent color, because we’re part Chinese and like to wear red on birthdays, and because sometimes I am required to show up to events dressed in some color or another that isn’t black or white, and makeup apparently doesn’t count as that color. (The colored 15 percent of my closet is arranged by ROYGBIV because I’m obsessive-compulsive.)
Looking at the huge pile of discarded clothes at my feet, I couldn’t help feeling both shame and pride.
Shame, because the mountain of tossed-out clothes seemed like an indication of how much time and money I had wasted trying to externally make myself appear like someone I wasn’t (the florals, 80 percent of my color — neon, what was I thinking?), or settling for things that ended up being ill-fitting, ill-suited, poorly constructed, or uncomfortable; things that were ultimately not right for me. Some of the items had only been worn once or twice; some, not at all.
Pride, because I think that at nearly 27 (my 365-day period of eligibility for the 27 Club is coming up really soon) I’m finally starting to grasp what I like and what I don’t like, and I am finally reaching that point at which I don’t want to settle for stuff that’s not at least 85 percent me anymore. I don’t care if it’s cute and it’s on sale; if it doesn’t fit the vision of myself that I have in my head (or fall within my white-black-burgundy-navy-neutrals parameters), it’s not going on my body or in my closet. I’m going to stop experimenting with myself and my look; I know who I am, I know what I want, and I deserve nothing less than that. I don’t want to settle anymore.
The Aftermath
I spent the next few days cleaning up the mess I’d made. Everything I wanted to keep, I hung back up in an orderly fashion. Arranging my things in a logical way was incredibly calming; like I was putting myself — and my life — back together in a manner that, for once, was thought-out and deliberate. In a way that I could understand, in a way that made my mornings a little less complicated. (Knowing what’s in my closet and where in my closet it is hung has made it a thousand times easier to dress. It’s been three days as of this writing since I finished my Great Purge, and on all three days, it only took five minutes to pull an outfit together. This has never, ever, ever happened.) In the process of rediscovering the contents of my closet, I also fell back in love with a bunch of items that I had forgotten were even in there to begin with. I put a few things on and immediately imagined a whole slew of ways to make them feel new.
I then took on the Herculean task of folding and boxing all the items I’d tossed out, and as I cleaned up, I cleaned out some memories, too. So many of them had stories attached. This green number was what I wore to Grandpa’s 75th birthday, when I wanted to quit my job but was encouraged to stay on. This was the dress I was wearing in that club in Shanghai when those dudes from Italy and Madagascar bought us drinks. This was the button-down I wore when I DJed at Future. This was the shirt I was wearing when I first kissed that guy who I knew — I just knew — would have eventually broken my heart had whatever it was we had going on between us lasted any longer. And then some. And I said goodbye to all of them, to all of those memories, good and bad. I tucked them away into a distant corner of my mind. I boxed them up and I let them all go.
It struck me then that every single aspect of The Purge was, in some way, representative of what I was going through internally, what I wanted to achieve in my own life, and not just in my closet. All this time, I’ve been trying to let go, to start with a clean slate upon which I can write my story, the way it deserves to be told. The way I want it to be told.
New wardrobe. New life. How’s that for a metaphor?
