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."