Tan Shoes With Pink Shoelaces

Yesterday, I did a good deed for both myself and someone else.

At my workplace, we have a very casual dress code -- my boss has even said we can wear pajamas to work if we want, although no one ever has -- so for the past two years, my wardrobe has mainly consisted of jeans, tee shirts and sweaters. I didn't even have a pair of khakis; the most dressy thing I ever wear to work is a denim skirt, and I look so out of place you'd think I wore a prom dress to the gym. And while it's kind of nice to be able to throw on jeans and a hoodie when I feel tired, and not having to trudge through snow in heels, wearing the same things day after day, week after week gets old. Plus, this has been a long, cold winter, so I've pretty much worn jeans and a sweater every day since Halloween.

The long and short of it is that my dressing habits are mundane. I've never been much of a clothes horse or a fashion risk taker (at least, not since third grade, when I fashioned myself a pair of capri pants about two decades after they were first popular and another decade before they came back into style), but in the past, I'd at least mixed colors and fabrics and rotated skirts, dresses and pants. The jeans-and-sweater-every-day routine was making me feel blah, bland, boring.

So yesterday, I cleaned out my closet. I got rid of four sweaters, a few long sleeved tee shirts and a few short sleeved tee shirts as well. Replacing them (so far) are a skirt, a button-down blouse, a nice pair of slacks and a cute little short-sleeved sweater designed not for warmth but for style. I may be the most dressy person at work, but at least I won't feel like such a slob anymore.

The good deed part of this, of course, is that I will donate the clothes I tossed to a worthy cause, and they will either be given to people who can't afford clothes or sold in a resale shop, with proceeds going to the less fortunate. I call that a win-win.