"Remoted” – Day 215 (Saturday)

Saturday. I love Saturdays. It was raining this morning, which has been the case for three days, but around noon the sun came out and it was like a whole new day. The rainy morning was spent with the seasonal wardrobe changeover.

I’m super old school when it comes to changing out the wardrobe for fall/winter and spring/summer. I know that many people don’t do this, and I can’t figure how it is possible to function with just “clothes.” For one thing, clothing is made in completely different fabrics for the weather. For another, it's tiring seeing the same clothes in the drawers and the closet for more than six months, especially if they aren’t even the right fabric weight for the current season. Why fish around past a cashmere sweater when retrieving a tee shirt in July? Just get it out of the way for a few months.

Pants and tops, ready to live
under the bed until spring.

Twice a year, I go through the clothes and pack up the stuff I know won’t be worn due to the seasonal weather, and unpack the upcoming season. Twice a year, it feels like Christmas when rediscovering sometimes forgotten favorites from the previous year. The out-of-season stuff goes in the cedar chest or into clear bags to be stored under the bed. Items are grouped by type – pants, shirts, dresses, shorts, skirts, beach/pool wear – each group in its own bag. And there are always a few items in the laundry or tucked away somewhere that miss being packed correctly and end up shoved into the wrong bag. Almost without fail, these are the items that will be most desired early in the next season, and won’t be located until much later. 

It felt a little weird changing out the wardrobe today. Roughly 99% of the spring/summer clothes pulled out last March, just a few days before the “remoting” began, were never worn. Just one of the six long jersey-knit skirts was worn (to a dentist appointment), and only one pair of the cute work ankle pants (again, to the dentist). The seasonal costume for staying at home turned out to be a pair of denim Bermuda shorts alternated with plaid cotton knee-length shorts; three pairs of cargo capris, two of which are in a camo pattern; three pairs of ankle length chinos; and a steady rotation of basic short sleeve tee shirts. And the same thong sandals alternated with one pair of slip on shoes. Shoes are also rotated for the season. Why be taunted by cute sandals when there is snow and ice outside? It’s not worth the pain.

Seasonal costumes, waiting for a life.

The closet is hung by categories – dresses, blouses, skirts, pants, jackets. Vintage pieces hang in a protective bag, or are stored flat in the cedar chest. The closet contains “work” and “going out” clothes, but with working from home and not going out, these pieces are just collecting dust. It’s the costume department for a life that is just waiting in the wings, ready to happen. Or worse, may continue to never happen. 

Drawers are rotated to contain seasonally appropriate short-sleeve or long-sleeve tee shirts, seasonal cardigans, pullover sweaters, and the growing collection of base layer tops and long johns. Jeans live year-round in a drawer with a relic of my fondly-remembered, long ago size-four life – supple cream-colored, straight leg leather pants with a faint gold wash. I love those pants. I looked (and felt) damned fine in those pants, which now serve as a memento of a time when I dated and had a bona-fide social life. Those pants, paired with a maroon vee neck top with a bell sleeve and a lariat necklace I made with maroon and black beads, were worn to dinner in a Greek restaurant in Los Angeles in September of 2008. They haven’t fit since 2010, and the effort and discipline required to ever get into them again has been deemed not worth the energy required. What would be the point? Would I dress up in my fancy size-four pants to sit home alone watching Netflix? I didn’t even want to do that pre-pandemic. Soon, they will likely crack and flake like the leather on my much-loved dining room chairs is doing. That’s life. One day you are young, supple, and feeling damned fine, and before too long, you are collecting dust, cracked and disintegrating.