Challenge Update: Week 21

Loud progress…

Challenge Rule 1: Buy No Clothes/Don’t Covet

I bought nothing this week. I did spend some time on Pinterest, allowing myself some time to dream about what I might like to create with some of the items in my stash, but other than that, I coveted nothing.

I find that channeling my covetousness into creativity is just as productive as channeling my rage into creativity. Yay for creativity!!

Challenge Rule 2: The Inventory

The global Cost Per Wear (CPW) analysis is something that I have long enjoyed doing, but really, and this should have been obvious to me long before now, but my CPW is going to go down faster if I am not constantly adding new purchased items to my closet. Duh.

The more I wear the random, nearly forgotten about pieces at the back of my closet, the more that individual item’s CPW is going to go down. This is math.

Also, being able to note on the inventory under the entry for an item: refashioned after 5 years and 15 wears, it is then satisfying to see that in the two months since that refashion, the item has already been worn 9 more times. Whatever little tweak was done was worth doing, because it gave the item wear desirability.

Challenge Rule 3: Go-To Catalogue:

Seriously. Some warmer weather would make me so happy. I have too many cute summery things to keep trudging around in winter sweaters!

Challenge Rule 4: Mise en Place/Plan Ahead:

Although rushed much of the week, this remains my lifeline.

Challenge Rule 5: Repair and Mend, Alter when Necessary:

I wrote a whole missive on this earlier this week…I will not bore you to tears with it any more!

Round-up

The Challenge is on track. I am so inspired by the little community of slow-fashion, tree-hugging creative types that I have fallen into.

In Other News:

The city has assigned the school for the scalawags next school year: it is an innovative bilingual French/English school not exactly next door to where we live, but it was first on our public school wishlist. Now we need to start making some decisions about a potential move and where we would like to be in relationship to the school…

This move will be critical for my hopes of having time to really work solidly on my novels. While it is true that “if you wait for the perfect circumstances you will never get anything done,” I discovered that driving across town and the stress of parking in busy streets six times a day (oh yes, because they have to come home for lunch!) is not propitious to having large swaths of stress-free creative time. I need a certain amount of inner peace to be able to write and be creative and driving around doesn’t leave me feeling peaceful.

So now there is this little “grown-up” worry that it is starting to creep in, and I need desperately to open up my hands and be willing to let us be guided through these decisions…