The Style Guide: “Comfortably Dressy”

My personal clothing style is “comfortably dressy.” Long ago I stopped wearing t-shirts and chose to focus on building a longer-lasting, higher-quality wardrobe, much like the “classic wardrobe” that magazine articles talk about (but without the trench coat, skinny jeans, and other garments I’ll never wear.)

I didn’t change to that overnight, it took several years of transition starting from when I was in high school in the early 90′s: I wore lots of earthy greens or beige scoop-necked tops, I borrowed old shirts from my dad, and I was briefly in the Earth Club. Then in college I primarily wore thrift-store shirts (I still have my favorite one that I got for ten cents!) with overalls (which I’m kind of surprised about, but everyone else wore them too.)

A crisis happened after graduation when I started working full-time and I needed a new wardrobe, but with no idea what to wear, nor the funds to afford anything nice, I ended up with a variety of cheap-fabric shirts and suits. I had lots of clothes, but only a couple of outfits that really felt “right.” A few years later I over-corrected, and I started to dress too fancy, and some of those clothes are in my daughter’s dress-up bin now.

So where did my style eventually land?

Comfortable = no panty hose, no itchy fabrics, no dry cleaning, minimal ironing, clothes that I can wear all day.

Dressy = I always feel like I have the right thing to wear to any occasion, instead of looking at a full closet and feeling at a loss. My clothes are dressy enough that I don’t have to go shopping for a particular event.

One more thing: I want to get dressed in about two seconds without having to think about it too hard.

My goal is that I want to look good at home and be able to go places without having to change clothes first. I don’t want to look over-dressed, but I do want to feel confident. If I’m going to make a small, stylish wardrobe work, then my clothes need to remain on the dressy side. I can’t wear the  t-shirts that looked good in college because now they make me look like a mom who stopped caring. I want to be a pretty mom.

When I lived in Italy earlier this year and saw beauty every day…

it made me want to dress up more. This summer I started to wear more dresses.

When I came back, I got a JCrew catalog in the mail, and it was a shame. The theme of the catalog was “weekend wear.” It was pajamas! You can be comfortable without looking like you are wearing pajamas.

It’s a common question with a pretty simple answer, so let’s break the style down into elements.

My first strategy for this look is washable knits: shirts that feel like a t-shirt, but look like a blouse. Comfortable knit tops that won’t wrinkle and can be layered. Clothes that can be thrown in the laundry at the end of the day. I don’t want to pay for dry cleaning; it’s too expensive. I would rather use the money to buy good shoes.

I use these two laundry habits to keep my clothes nice:

1. When something spills on me I rinse it out in the sink right away. Almost every potential stain can be washed out with water and a little soap if you don’t wait. Then I hang the garment on a towel bar to let it air dry before I toss it in the dirty clothes hamper to wash as usual. I do this for my kids’ clothes too, and it saves lots of time that I used to spend on stain treatment.

2. I turn denim inside out to keep it dark and air dry it on the line. Dark denim looks dressier and hides spots, so I wear jeans a few times before they need to be cleaned.

I don’t get that dirty when I do housekeeping. I’m mostly just doing the dishes and picking up. Dust washes out. Dishwashing doesn’t leave stains. I use a soap-based cleaner instead of bleach to clean the bathroom. (Bleach isn’t a good cleaning product; it’s mostly used for sanitizing, and I think soap does a better job.) Since we’re doing a home renovation, I do have a dress that I wear when I’m painting, but I don’t consider that part of my regular wardrobe.

I value natural fibers. Most of my winter sweaters are cashmere. Is that impractical for a stay-at-home mom? Baby spit-up washes out of cashmere the same as it washes out of acrylic. Acrylic sweaters last for a season before they start to pill up and lose their shape. Cashmere sweaters cost twice as much, but they last for years. I wash wool and cashmere sweaters in the washing machine on the wool cycle (turn them inside out) and let them air dry. Wool can be aired out to freshen so I don’t launder them every time I wear them, just once in a while.

It takes two extra seconds to put on a necklace. I have nice jewelry, but I mostly wear the fake pearls that little hands can grab, pull, and stick in their mouths.

Since I don’t want to think too hard to coordinate outfits, I play it safe with solid colors and mix in scarves.

I know in the photo above I’m wearing house shoes, so before I leave the house I’ll put on boots, wear a scarf and big sunglasses. Big sunglasses are a must.

Coming up: the Shopping Guide

If your style is less conservative and more artistic, Megan at SortaCrunchy is making her wardrobe better reflect her artistic nature with more colors and vintage pieces.

It Is So Much Easier to Simplify Than Organize

I’m cleaning out my closet again.

The ideal time to clean out stuff is before and after a move. I know most people don’t expect to clean out their stuff after moving to a new place. Didn’t they just purge a bunch of stuff before moving?

But after moving is when you can really see what you have and how your stuff works in your space.

It’s been a while since I’ve looked through all my clothes, so I had more confidence in giving away the remaining things I won’t use. This time I thought about how clothes are meant to be useful. For each item, I tried it on and asked myself, “Will I use this?”

I’ve been in the process of reducing my number of clothes over the last few years. I used to feel like I needed more variety, and so I chose quantity over quality. I have a fraction of the clothes I owned seven years ago. I like my clothes so much better now.

I will never get over the amazement of how when you give away the clothes that you won’t wear, you like the clothes you keep so much more, almost like you just went and bought a new wardrobe.

I used to do the big switcheroo every summer and winter to put away the clothes from last season and make room for the next. It made me feel organized.

It was a big pain.

Now everything fits on the same bar–summer clothes to the left and winter on the right. I’m storing the maternity clothes separately. I think this is the right amount of clothes for me now. I need to replace a couple of things that I wore out last winter.

I didn’t even use the bar on the other side.

Another thing that I’ve been able to get rid of lately? Boxes.

I used to save cardboard boxes because since I lived in a small space, if I stored things in boxes then I could put everything away in closets like a game of Tetris.

I was always getting ready for the next move, but this time I’m unpacking it all. I don’t need to keep old curtains in a box in case I’ll use them at the next apartment.

I used to wonder if going through my stuff was really helping me to save time and simplify. It can take so much time; wouldn’t it be simpler not to deal with it at all?

But this. This is one reason why I clean out my junk–so other people won’t have to do it for me.

Jules at Pancakes and French Fries is doing 31 Days of William Morris to help her home reflect the quote, “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” Let’s root for her.

Megan at Declutter Daily is getting rid of something every day so she can make a way in her garage.

When Doug and I got married, one of our early promises to each other was that if we ever had a garage, we would always be able to park our car in it. Right now the garage is staging the move and renovation, so we’re not quite there.

How to Whitewash a Fireplace the Wrong Way

When we last saw the fireplace it was surrounded by rubble from the fallen brick arches.

With the brick arches gone it was easier to see the large brick fireplace in all its glory.

Normally I’m a fan of interior brick, but the colors of this brick fireplace were a combination of spicy brown mustard and pink salmon–not good. It made me cringe whenever I looked at it.

I had a creative idea that we could whitewash it, and we wouldn’t just whitewash it with paint, we could try a traditional whitewash technique called limewash.

Limewash is a whitewash that  has been used on masonry and plaster for thousands of years. You make it with hydrated lime (find it in the garden section of the home improvement store) dissolved in water in about a 1:4 ratio. It makes a thin, inexpensive milk-like paint that you can layer on the bricks with a brush.

So we painted with it.

I hoped I would like it better than using regular paint because it would give an aged patina instead of a thick coating. I was charmed by the idea of using a traditional technique I don’t see often.

“This will make a good blog post!” I thought to myself encouragingly.

As the whitewash dries it turns from gray to white. It’s normally used for building exteriors because it can wear off, though nowadays they have binding agents that you can mix in to make it longer-lasting. I didn’t feel too concerned about that, however, because I had done a test coat with extra bricks. Those bricks had turned a pretty shade of white, and the white didn’t rub off.

The first coat didn’t look very good, but first coats never do. We added a second coat, then a third.

After the third coat, well, it still didn’t look how I expected. You could still see the spicy brown mustard behind the white, and it didn’t look like a nice aged patina, it looked chalky and…dirty.

Then my two year old climbed up on it, and the whitewash rubbed onto his shirt, and I knew it was through.

It made perfect sense that this is a technique used mainly for exteriors. Whitewash would look lovely on the outside of a cottage, but it was not the look I was going for.

So after a trip to the paint store, two coats of a good masonry primer, and one final coat of white latex paint, we called it done, and I like the result so much better.

The mantle is still in the garage being refinished, and don’t mention that it looks somewhat like an igloo now because if I suggest making any more changes to it, Doug will kill me.

And this is the story about Lesson #4 for Home Improvement:

Don’t get creative about the main features of your home. Your creative idea now will become a “What were they thinking?” later. Creativity is for accessories only.

Am I right?

And Now It’s Ours: Our First House

This is our first house, but not our first home.

When money is flowing through our fingers like water for this renovation, we’ve called the plumber three times, Doug put in the new floor, and everything is freshly painted white, it’s kind of hard to believe that this is really for us.

We saved up our money for it so we were prepared, but I still have thoughts like, “Is it okay to spend that much money on something trivial like shelf liners?” “Will this choice be timeless or outdated in ten years?” “Is this the best quality and value for the money so we only have to buy it once?”

In college I knew too many children who didn’t have socks, and I knew them so well that when I started earning more money, it was hard to spend it on things like expensive home furnishings. Every dollar represented money that could have been used to buy a pair of socks for a disadvantaged child, so I had to be responsible with my choices about spending money, not out of guilt, but just from knowing.

One time I mentioned that to someone, and she looked horrified as she said, “I could never live like that!” so I don’t really talk about it much anymore.

I spend money more easily for the household now because it’s not just for me, and I’ve seen how buying quality can save money in the long run. That’s why I was so glad to find a home that hadn’t been renovated yet. The counters, the floors, and everything had served a single family for forty years, so we carefully made updates that might last another forty. Will we live here for that long or only a few years? Only time will tell.

We brought in our furnishings from our storage unit where they have waited in boxes for nine months.

For the kids it was like Christmas, no, like five Christmases when they saw their old toys again. They stayed in their rooms to play again with their toys, and we didn’t see them for two whole days.

Indeed it was kind of like Christmas because I boxed everything in the days after last year’s Christmas, so our things were packed in the remnants of old wrapping paper and the newspapers from that week, our dishes secured with green ribbon and cushioned by crumpled-up red and silver shiny paper.

Our things look good in our new house. They seem to fit, and yes, I know I’m teasing you by not showing more pictures yet, but we’ve been so busy doing that there was not much time for telling about it. Soon, I promise.

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Also, the online workshop for Simple Blogging is on Wednesday. Registration is still open. We’ll be talking about using a long-term perspective for blogging and time management so that you can position yourself to realize your goals, avoid blogging burnout, and spend less time overall at the computer. There will be plenty of time for Q&A as well. Sign up for it here.