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Progress on the clothing front

I think it’s been two weeks since I wrote the post about the me made wardrobe dreams and well holy cow, there is actually measurable progress. IN JUST TWO WEEKS. I mean come on folks, this never happens. I get grand ideas and then 3 years later I write a post that says something like oh gee I don’t know where time time went and I realize that nothing has happened. This has been the pattern for 99.9% of my life. Until the last two weeks.

I have completed 4 cotton a-line dresses, 1 cotton prairie dress and a cotton pull over top. I have three more patterns in the line up that I am ready to try and have fabric pulled and pre-washed for them. I can now go for almost two weeks wearing clothing I made for myself every single day. More than that if you don’t have an issue with Hawaiian print capri pants. Yes some people do, but they make me happy.

All of this makes me happy. That’s the really interesting part of this. NONE of these clothes are exactly the height of fashion, but I don’t care. They make me happy when I have them on, and that is huge. How many times have I stood in my closet, staring at what is in there, feeling like I don’t have anything to wear. There’s tons of clothes but they don’t bring me joy. I mean the kind of joy I felt as a little kid when I got some clothing I really liked. Now, I can wear things that fit me and make me happy when I put them on and meet all expectations of public decency and I can do that every day of the week, not just every now and then.

I read an interesting article this week online about applying the Pareto principle in your day to day life. For those not immediately familiar, the Pareto principle is also referred to as the 80/20 rule, where 80% of the work takes 20% of the time and the other 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. The sentence in the article that really stuck out was that you probably wear 20% of your wardrobe 80% of the time, and that really hit home. I mean even taking out the idea that I have a few formal dresses and clothes for faire, I still tend to wear the same things all the time, because they make me happy. What would I do if I had an entire closet of clothes that make me happy??? LOL. I get giddy just thinking about it.

I still have a ways to go, but I’m at two weeks right now, and I’m making progress. I can’t wait for the next couple of weeks!