Wednesday, September 15, 2010

The Evolution of Clothing

I could have named this post, "The Decline of Clothing", but evolution seemed a bit more neutral.

In my efforts to keep all of my people clothed, I was thinking about how my idea of proper clothing has "evolved" over the years with the addition of many more children.

1. At first, I wanted all of my people and myself dressed in fancy, name brand clothing. I never really achieved that for myself, but I did manage to have my little ones fashionably dressed for a while. Looking back, I'm not proud of this stage and I don't think anyone should be proud of being in this stage.

2. The next step was not so much name brand clothing, but still dressed very nicely and stylishly. Some people come by this quite naturally without much effort. I wasn't one of them. I lack vision when it comes to stylish clothing.

3. The next level is just making sure all clothing ensembles are matching. I think I was in this phase around the time Faith was a baby. This is a perfectly reasonable expectation. I miss this stage. It goes down hill from here.

4. With Cannon I entered the next phase-- all clothing really should fit properly. This means people are wearing the right sizes. No flood pants, no super tight jeans, shirts that cover little tummies. Fashion is a distant memory, while matching is nice, but not a necessity.

5. Enter George and enter the next phase: IS IT CLEAN? Yes? Okay, you can wear it. You may not wear dirty clothes. This is where we are right now. Elinor, you want to wear the fleece, cheetah print skirt? Is it clean? Go for it. Clark, you want to wear humongous t-shirts and basketball shorts? Are they clean? Then yes, you can wear them.

6. I would not like to lower my standard any further than, "Is it clean?" But I can see that there could be another level that I could live with, Does it cover the parts of your body that need to be covered? We shall see if we end up there.

I know this is all rather silly, but I'm just trying to keep my priorities in order. Nice clothes are nice, and we certainly do want to be neat and comely, but I'm in the business of raising children, not creating fashion plates. Also, I'm betting that at some point, my people will want to start attracting members of the opposite sex, thus they will recognize the need to present ones best self. This will include moving back up the scale of the evolution of clothing. I'd like them to stop at level 3--clothing ensembles should match. In all fairness, Bethany already has a pretty good eye for fashion and if she had a mother with more natural style, could very easily settle in at level 2--nicely and stylishly. Fortunately for her, the finances will never support the ridiculous level 1-- fancy, name brand clothing. It's best not to be tempted.

I've saved most of my kiddos' clothing to use with later kiddos. This is great, but it's no easy task to organize all the clothing and then find it again when I need it. I have about a billion plastic totes with kids' clothes stored in my sister's basement because I haven't found a good spot to put them in my own house. Then the trick is to pull the clothes out of the clean laundry when they are outgrown and get them back in to the tote of the right size clothing. It hurts my brain to keep it all straight. About once a year I do an overhaul and get everything back into the right place. I guess it must be about that time because I'm feeling overrun by kids' clothes and my own clothes as I transition from maternity back to normal clothes. Well, the big normal clothes because the normal normal clothes haven't been seen for a while. Is it all really as complicated as I just made it sound? And how ridiculous to be complaining about having so many clothes. It just goes to show that "less is almost always more."

8 comments:

Mothership said...

Grrrrrr! I HATE the bi-annual clothing exchange. It used to be so simple: if it was too small, it went into a box. Getting low on clothes? Buy some more. No longer, I must sort the too small from the might-still-fit-next-summer. I must also sort which items are too stained or otherwise destroyed to put on another child for another season. THEN, I have to pull out the next season's clothes and see what does, in fact, still fit from last spring and transition the too small to the next child or, if there is too much size difference, to the appropriate box. After all is sorted and put away, I have to go through it all and see if we have any matching outfits or twenty tops and no pants. Clothing ninety-two children is worthy of complaint!

Castiel Moyes said...

I so understand all of this. I don't have 6 kids but I went from your 1 to your 5 in 4 kids. Maddy was always dressed to nice and her preschool teacher even told me she was the best dressed kid in the class! And now we have Lilly who wears whatever she wants over and over and truth be told it isn't always clean. And Ivy well that is a story yet to be told but I am sure she is going to be in some REALLY stylish 10 year old hand-me-downs.

And I decided the other day that I was going to go through everyones drawers and get rid of 90% of their clothes because it seems that everyone just wears the same thing over and over and over again! So why do I keep washing 10 million shirts and pants???? Less is TOTALLY more! But I can't seem to part with anything cause I got this darn 4th girl bringing up the rear and you know she is going to NEED every stitch of her big sisters clothing...right?

Baden Fox said...

The last 3 weeks since Sophie came I have struggled to maintain a category 7 which we could entitled "dressed." Right now only 3 out of the 4 people in the house are in that category. (Wiliam just jumped out of the bathtub.) My new neighbors must think that I only own 1 shirt and 1 pair of pants between my two older children because I doubt they have ever seen them both with both of those items on. You are way ahead of me with six kids!

Baden Fox said...

P.S.
That's a pretty cute lineup of kids you have on your sidebar. You have an unbroken record of good looks!

Katie Fox said...

I have been on the is it clean level for quite a while. I do put the it has to match level on sundays. With how dirty my boys get it is really scary sometimes. By the end of the summer Simon was lucky to get his diaper changed, thankfully he is potty trained now!

jkmilligan said...

That's funny that you posted this because I just went through moving all the boys clothes around yesterday. It is an uphill battle I must say. We are in the stage where you can't wear clothes with holes in them to school. We have never been a name-brand family, and honestly I look down on people who feel the need to be in name-brand clothes, they probably look down at me too for my lack of them:).

Matt and Misty said...

I think you could still add another stage to your clothing requirments. It could be "Does it stink".This could give you something to work with in the future.

Tina said...

I would add the "mom gets to dictate what you wear to church" stage. I'm slowly watching that one walk out the door. And don't forget "mom's opinion on fashion no longer matters" Yes I think most mothers go through these stages. I've learn to forgo saying "My kids will never do or wear *insert action or clothing here*" because I have found my children doing most of what I said my kids would never do...like leave the house with uncombed hair or wear holes in their pants...Having more children does have a way of humbling us doesn’t it? HAHA

BTW Little George is absolutly adorable!! :)