why you’re still spring cleaning in summer
some first steps in looking at objects from another lens.
I’m at this strange influx of productivity and unproductivity. In this odd grey area, I’m learning to care more. More about myself, all the tedious bits. All the parts I’ve neglected after years of procrastination.
Someone who has helped me get to this frame is Brittany Bathgate. She’s a style influencer of all things fashion, books, film, and more. In her thirty minute vlogs, she promotes slow living, where she rambles on and on about a singular shirt, how much history it holds.
It gets weighed down in memories and reminders, and already, five minutes with her and all you’ve accomplished is the feeling that you’ve heard your friend talk about something that they love, making you miss them still in this pandemic-heavy world.
I feel bad viewing her content as white noise as I’m usually working while listening, but sometimes it’s always nice having another voice in the room that isn’t yours. Which is a shame because her color-grading, visuals, and aesthetics are all breathtaking.
Her videos paired with my recent favorite minimalist, Tommy, has brought a sense of clarity to my own wardrobe. I am the worst at getting rid of things. Before I begin to even think of tossing something out, I attach nostalgia to it. This bad habit makes me keep things longer than necessary, shirts with holes, stains, garments that could not be saved even by the most expensive laundromats.
Here are some things that I’ve learned:
- Look at things less in the value of a dollar. Look at them through longevity.
- I think in the end, I’ve exhausted myself. Emotionally. Physically. I’m at my limit at what I can keep. Because when a typhoon wrecks the world, there is only the I in me left.
- Humans habit themselves with wanting to fill in gaps. So, the more storage you have, the more you will accumulate.
- If you haven’t worn something in the past year, you won’t wear it, ever.
- When choosing an outfit, if you don’t think you want to be seen in it (by anybody), then, you might as well toss it out.
- To be fashionable is not “wearing different clothes everyday,” but finding a “singular pattern” that suits you.
Now the days are much slower. It’s June and the floors are sticky with summer. Humidity drags the days out, there is still light after 8. As I finally switch out wool and down for linen and seersucker, I’m looking at nights out, drunk dazes with friends, boys I’ve met, clothes that have been overslept-in on the first morning trains. They stink of nostalgia, the glumness of outliving my present tense.
Personal style, for what it’s worth in my diminishing adolescence, is something that is acquired through trial and error. I feel only closer to a sense of personal wealth whose currency has any sense of weight to me.
