Emotional Savagery and the Art of Closet Purgin'

Believe it or not, this is AFTER I culled a big bag's worth of clothes out!

Last summer, when we returned home from a few days away in St. Louis, I opened my closet door and saw that the thing had imploded.  Seriously.  The white vinyl-dipped builder-grade closet shelf/hanging rod had unanchored from the drywall and collapsed on the closet floor.

Tidy, but still too many clothes!

I can only imagine what a noise that must have made, echoing through the empty, shut-up house!  It was back during that hellacious Heat Wave in Late July, and that is only important to throw in because it helps to explain why my temper went nuclear when I saw the imploded closet.  I wasn't mad at the closet, either.  I was mad at myself for having so many clothes that it pertineer brought the house down.

I figured I'd have to handle all those clothes to get them back hung up once the closet was fixed, so in the hot heat of my bedroom, which had been closed up tight for the week or so that we were gone, I grabbed one of those 33-gallon clear recycle bags and went to town, culling every piece of clothing I hadn't worn in a while, that I was too fat to fit, that I just didn't like, that I wondered why in the hell I bought that thing.

It took me under an hour to fill that bag.  I was armed with righteous indignation, pent-up rage, ice-water (to stay hydrated!), some serious emotional savagery, and a will to lighten that poor closet bar's load.

The pictures attached to this point are the AFTER pictures.  Holy heck.

Yesterday, I opened up my closet door, looking for one of my hoodies from undergrad, so I could participate in Orange and Maroon Days.  I found the hoodie, but also saw that the closet is STILL overcrowded to the point of being overwhelming.

"Other-trucker, I'm gonna clean you out!" I announced to that closet, and I started wiggling each hanger a little bit, to see which article of clothing I was touching.

I broke a few of my velvet-flocked slimline plastic hangers, reefing and pulling to extricate them from the closet.  I pulled out a few items and definitively decided to get rid of one navy blue-and-white striped tunic that fits me like a tent.  The stripes are horizontal.  It never flattered me, and I can't remember why I thought I had to have it, except for a few summers ago, I had a brief and torrid love-affair with acquiring those LulaRoe Leggings that everybody was selling, and I needed tunic-tops to cover my ass in those leggings.  Guess what.  I hate wearing leggings.  They're too hot.  They're too tight.  They have no pockets.  They're too stretchy, and I'm too undisciplined to be trusted with such stretchy pants.  My jeans will at least punish me a little bit to keep me on track with eating right.  Those leggings are just like a force-flex garbage bag, and that's what I'd look like if I made it a habit of wearing stretchy leggings as though they're real pants and stupid tunic-tops.  The tunic-tops don't look well with my boot-cut jeans.  They make me look like I'm hiding under clothes.  Which I am.  But I don't want to be that obvious about it.

Where the heck did all that come from?!

Anyway.  That one epically unflattering tunic-top was all I managed to pull from the closet to get rid of.  There are tons more things in that closet that either do not look great on me or I just don't wear.  Intellectually, I know this.  But in this time of Pandemic Purgatory, there's been so much out of my control that I've let go of- routine, certainty, freedom- that it seems like a bridge too far to voluntarily get rid of stuff, even ugly, ill-fitting shirts.  What if I regret putting those things in the donation bag?  Even that striped tunic-top that did nothing for me?

This won't last forever.  The emotional savagery will come back.  And when it does, here's hoping that the hang-bar in my closet gets far lighter.  There's a time to acquire and a time to hold on, and a time to Release.