Time For A Purge!

By Amanda J.

If you’ve read my last few posts, you’ll know that the inner woman has more or less gone AWOL.  I’ve tried everything to wake her from her slumbers and whilst I have managed to rouse her for a small period of time on a couple of occasions, she’s been quite content to once more disappear after a few hours.  I know that sounds quite promising but a large proportion of the time that she has emerged has been spent trying to find a way of persuading her to stay before I finally admit defeat and change back to relative normality.  That’s quite a contrast to last year when I could be found in my heels on a weekly basis and sometimes several times in a week.  The truth is that something inside me has changed and I’ll be darned if I can figure out what it is.

And in that quest for discovery, I decided to do something radical – purge!

I can already hear the murmurings of ‘purge?  Have you lost your marbles, Mand?  You’ve done that after all you’ve said about avoiding purging at all costs?’.

And the short answer is yes.  But luckily, there’s a long answer too.

It’s not easy being a CDer.  For starters, we have to navigate the dark art of women’s sizing.  Here in the UK, women’s clothes are sized in even numbers – 8, 10, 12, 14, and so on.  By trial and error, I’ve discovered that I’m a size 16.  Sometimes.  I have a size 14 jacket that’s huge and a size 18 dress that’s, shall we say, a snug fit.  In many respects, though, that’s the easy bit.  When we’re buying clothes purely for a bit of dress-up, we can accept things that are a bit oversized or where it’s impossible to do the zip up (rear zips are irrelevant when one is admiring the front view in the mirror) but style is far more critical and when we do not want to try stuff on when shopping (as most of us do) in male mode, it’s like a game of blindfold darts.  Because the fact of the matter is that something that looks impossibly cute on the woman sitting opposite on the train will quite possibly look hideous on you – here speaks the voice of experience!

So suffice to say that my stash includes quite a lot that, at best, had passed its ‘use by’ date and at worst was just a poorly thought through purchase.  In my case, those items were starting to mount up and as the holdall in which my stash is stored got heavier and more difficult to return to its hiding place in our roof space, I realised that action was needed.  And so a purge, which you’ll be relieved to hear was only partial, has been executed.

I’ve had purges many times in the past and those were relatively easy – get rid of everything and breathe a sigh of relief that I’m finally cured of this dreadful affliction.  Sometimes, that relief lasted a couple of months but usually just days, and in one case hours, before the grief set in and restocking followed in quick succession.  This time was different but, in many ways harder.  It’s easy to decide what to get rid of when everything is going but more of a challenge when one needs to be selective not least because I have sentimental attachment to pretty well everything.  But in a rare moment of orderly thought, I managed to come up with a plan as to how I was going to shed the excess items.

1. Things I can’t wear.  I have a very fond attachment to my first pair of ankle boots.  They were picked up for £5 in the local supermarket sale and when I first set foot outside the house, they were part of the outfit.  But if you’ve read my last post – ‘Perchance She Sleepeth’ – you’ll know that my attempt to wear them on a recent outing ended with me buying a pair of flats and changing out of them due to the height of the heel bending my ankle beyond what was comfortable.  The decision that they had to go was made easier by the fact that they never looked as good on as they did when being admired on the display prior to purchase.

2.  Things that I don’t wear because they do nothing for my feminine feelings.  A couple of years ago, I bought a baby blue jumper.  It’s a gorgeous colour and the acrylic/wool is softer than anything else I’ve ever experienced so it should have been a shoo-in to the stash.  Sadly, the promise it offered prior to wearing it was not delivered when I actually put it on and that highlights a particular problem we face.  Some garments, including this jumper, rely on the shape of the wearer for their style and on my frame, it just didn’t cut the mustard.  We all know well the differences between female and male body shapes and whilst we can sometimes get away with it – I have a wonderful pleated midi skirt which gives the hint of feminine hips even without padding – often we can’t.  So despite its promise in the shop, it’s been consigned to the get-rid-of pile.

3.  Things that I don’t wear because I lack the anatomy to do them justice.  One word – boobs or lack thereof!  I’m quite happy with my home made breast forms held in place in a pocket bra but their shortcomings are blindingly obvious.  There’s nothing quite as wonderful as looking down at a full bust when one is wearing a high necked top but as necklines get lower there comes a point where things take a quick turn for the worse.  I love the idea of cowl necked jumpers and, as I started to build my stash, felt that it was an essential item to include.  I’ve worn it often since but always with a sense of disappointment when the aforementioned home-made forms (rice packed into the knotted feet of an old laddered pair of tights/pantyhose if you’re interested) are in full view.  The lack of care I tend to take when washing clothes probably didn’t help the jumper retain the more flattering shape I seem to remember that it had when I first bought it but whatever the truth, I want to feel uplifted, not deflated, when I unleash the inner woman so it had to go.

4.  Things that didn’t live up to their promise.  I’ve always found midi dresses quite alluring and was delighted to find one with long sleeves, a high neckline and hanging at mid-calf level.  There was absolutely nothing wrong with that dress – it was a good fit with a tie-belt that gave the hint of a waistline, the high neckline avoided the aforementioned boobage problems and it was nondescript enough to be worn out if I ever decided to go out wearing it.  But it just, for want of a better word, bored me!  I could have kept it ‘just in case’ but why bother when there’ll always be something else in the stash that’ I’d gravitate to?

5. Purchases that were just plain wrong.  I really like the vibe of a jumper dress with boots and after a bit of a search, I found one in our local Primark (UK cheap fast fashion chain).  Now the thing is that I really wanted one that hung just above the knee and this one looked a bit long on the hanger in the shop but it was only when I got it home and tried it on did I realise exactly how long it was (very long!).  To make matters worse, whilst the style I was seeking to emulate required knee high boots, I only had ankle boots and the whole ensemble just looked not only wrong but also irredeemable so, like many of its stash-mates, it had to go.

6. Things that have been superseded.  Not so long ago, I bought a round-necked grey jumper with fake white collar and cuffs – it looks like it’s two garments in one – which I wore on my first proper outing into the real world when I interacted with sales assistants for the first time.  Although a little baggy (a nice chunky belt resolved that), I felt feminine wearing it and had absolutely no complaints about it.  But the reality is that I realised that if I was going to step out into the real world once more, there were other things I’d wear in preference and, as a result, it was unlikely to ever be worn again so was added to the jettison pile.

And so those plus a couple more items have been washed, folded and placed in a bag ready for donation to the local charity shop.  I’ve done a lot of soul searching and am fairly certain that despite the fond memories I have of each item (either when buying or wearing them), I won’t miss them because most of them have also left a feeling of disappointment.  But in donating them, I hope that whoever buys each item will have very different emotions about them to the ones I had when selecting them for donation and, more importantly, that the items themselves are finally able to deliver to their new owners what I hoped they would for me when I bought them.

Before I bring this post to a close, there’s another category here and that’s things on the danger list.  I’m very lucky to take a UK8/EU42 shoe which means that shoes at the upper end of the female range just about fit me, ‘just about’ being the operative word.  Apart from the aforementioned ankle boots, I have another couple of pairs of ankle boots which have a heel height suitable to be worn outside (and have been several times) but which start to make their presence felt if I’m in them for too long.  Both pairs are gorgeous but I’ve removed them from the stash and put them in a pending bag to avoid doing anything hasty and then regretting it.  Maybe they’ll come back to the fold, maybe they’ll go but it’s a decision for another time, not now.

So where does that leave things?  In short, it leaves a slimmed down stash containing items that can fulfil my needs when I want to look glamourous and items that would not look out of place in any town centre full of shoppers.  It also leaves me with the sense that I have got a grip of something that sometimes felt like it was spiralling out of control.  What I have left – three dresses, two skirts, one pair of trousers, one top, one jacket, one coat and three pairs of shoes (not including the two pairs of boots on the danger list) – still gives plenty of scope for both recreational CDing & outings with a little bit of room for one or two additional items if I see something I like.

The burning question, of course, is was that exercise sufficient to bring ‘Amanda’ back or does she still, as I described in my last post, sleepeth?  For the answer to that, you’ll have to wait until my next post!