Challenge Update: Week Three

Buy Nothing and Don’t Covet

I bought nothing this week. Not even any supplies to make my mending easier. Yay me.

I coveted quantifiably less this week. I mean, wow, a lot less. On almost every front.

I had sense of pleasure and pride at the little alterations I have accomplished since the beginning of the year to make me love what I already own. I was so happy that I remembered to take pictures of the various phases of the work, because I could look at them and remind myself that I really do love what I own.

However, I had a moment this week where I felt an urge, a deep deep longing in the pit of my soul for something. I could not even put my finger on what I wanted. I can’t say that it was coveting per se, because it wasn’t for anything in particular. It was just a deep feeling of being incomplete. It sucked and under normal conditions a little something new might have scratched that itch.

The discomfort did eventually pass, but because I had to fully experience the ache, I’m still a bit dizzy from the whole thing.

Inventory

I added a few oldies but goodies in the Pantheon of Legends, replete with their photos and all their stats. There is one item I added, something I have owned for a while, for which I have extremely complicated feelings. I am going to need to tease out those feelings before I decide if I need to discard it.

The sweater, a sweet teal number with little white bunnies hopping gleefully across it, was purchased at a time when I was at my least virtuous. I had very specific reasons for buying it, reasons which, the more I think about, the more my heart aches.

I would like to be brave enough to just discard it but those emotional ties that bind sometimes seem to find us clinging to something that hurts.

Sometimes, feeling something, even something unpleasant, is better than feeling nothing at all. I’m not sure the KonMari Method has a provision for that.

I didn’t expect it to be a bunny sweater that would start the dredging dredging of the junk from the depths of my heart. But here we are.

Go-To Catalog

Nothing new to report here. I was not creative in this domain this week. I’ve got time, I tell myself as January draws to a close. Plenty of time.

Plan Ahead and Mise en Place

With the exception of one night where I was up till all hours baking a smurf-blue birthday cake for a four-year-old scalawag, I planned ahead and was glad for it. On the morning of the birthday, I ended up getting blue frosting over all my clothes from the night before anyway, so I had a good excuse to stand in front of my closet and whine that I had nothing to wear.

Repair and Mend, Alter When Necessary

Lots of mending this week! I fixed a burgeoning hole on a cheap Target tank I bought in 2007, I fixed an armpit hole in one of the indulgent husband’s sweater. I basted a knee hole in the same indulgent husband’s “home jeans.”

I did a temporary repair job using iron-on patches for the scalawags’ favorite camouflage pants. I still need to stitch it on better, because after one wash it already started to come off, and this makes it look like stickers and stickers are fun to peal off. (Or are they?)

I did some sleeve alterations on a dress I bought in 2019 which I love but rarely wore because the sleeves were frumpy. I started shortening some sleeves on a jacket that I’d been rolling the sleeves up on forever.

Round-Up

This week was all about the feelings. I knew it was going to happen eventually, which was why I was keeping the Challenge a secret from the people I live with. I did not expect to be three weeks into January and be craving so profoundly or flagellating myself for my inability to cut ties to a less-than-virtuous period of my life.

The big question for me is: what in the world would have satisfied that longing I felt earlier this week?