2/365

2/365 from Nicolle Clawson on Vimeo.

We saw "Up In The Air" today. It was between that and "It's Complicated". The movie with a realistic plot won. :)

In the movie, George Clooney (who is looking mighty, mighty fine I must say) is a motivational speaker who uses an analogy of a backpack in all his presentations. He talks about filling your backpack with all the things that weigh us down in life and trying to walk with it on. I'll let you see the movie and say no more, but within a few hours of hearing that, I had done cleaned out my closet!! For someone who takes a lot of pride in being organized, cleaning out my closet somehow also gets procrastinated/neglected/flat out ignored. And it's because doing so requires looking at everything that is in my closet. And that takes a lot of time. And a lot of energy. And a lot of nerve, when you're Nicolle Galyon. Because for me, looking at all my clothes takes wayyyy longer than it should ever take someone. In other words, I have too many clothes. When I came to college, I was the least fashionable girl at Belmont. Not because I didn't like clothes, but because a) I didn't have alot of money and b) there was nowhere to shop in the flatland isolation-booth-of-a-state I grew up in. Once my circumstances changed financially and geographically, I bloomed like a Chia pet in your kitchen window. I have a walk-in closet that is as big as my old living room now and I can't seem to find anything because every square millimeter of the racks were occupied. Embarrassing. And shameful.

After 2 hours of deliberating over things that I haven't worn in well over a year (some too long for me to mention in public), I finally hauled 4 lawn trash bags out of there. And the sad thing is that you can't even tell. It's still packed floor to ceiling with enough clothes to...without doing laundry for months, wear a different outfit everyday. As I stood there looking at the tan pea coat I swore was worth $200 and the tank top that still had a tag on it, I wondered what's is all worth? And I realized that the reason I like hoarding my clothes is because it makes my purchases less temporary and more valuable in my mind. It helps me justify how much I've spent. So as I lugged those bags up the stairs into the closet with 6 other bags of clothes from the last time I'd cleaned the closet, I asked for a little forgiveness. And a smaller closet in the next house I live in.