2 Steps to Lose 15+ Pounds in the Clothing Department
- Pick three shirts and three pants with holes in them to wear for grubby work (painting, putting insulation in the attic, wrestling pigs in the back pasture…) Seriously, you’ll have one to wash, one to wear, and one to save a seat on the shelf. How many days in a row do you really do hard labor? Throw the rest away. No one at the Salvation Army needs grubbies. When was the last time you met a person at a shelter who only had formal wear? (And if you haven’t met anyone at a shelter, perhaps you should find some time to volunteer.)
- Scan your closet for all the things you have a negative feeling about.
- These are the clothes you bought and didn’t work and now you feel guilty about wasting the money so you keep it hoping to find a way to make it work. {Think about this a minute: are you redeeming your mistake by holding onto that garment? Wouldn’t it be more redemptive to own your mistake, figure out how to avoid it in the future, and pass along the lesson learned to someone who could actually enjoy it? You are not un-spending the money by cluttering your closet.}
- Or the shirt that you love, but the neckline hits just wrong so you never wear it.
- Or the jeans from high school that looked really good 30-lbs ago and even if fashion repeats on a 30-year cycle, it is unlikely you’ll wear them again anyway. And you don’t have a daughter to pass them on to if that particular version of fashion returns…
- Or the sweater your husband gave you when you were engaged and you never liked it but there it still sits
- Or the shorts with the rough seam around the waist, so you never pick them because they are uncomfortable.
- Or the socks you keep as a last resort because they inch their way down your ankle into your shoe as you walk.
- Pretty much anything you avoid wearing or keep for guilt or hope for skinnier days. {The one caveat here, if you are pregnant, don’t despair! I know you haven’t seen your toes in the past eight weeks, but you really are likely to fit into those clothes again.}
OK, so all those “negative-feeling clothes”? Fold them neatly and put them in a box to give away. Don’t look through the box again later. It is not a place to shop.
If you are on a tight budget, it can seem really hard to let go of “good” clothes.
Don’t buy the lie.
There is always a way to be generous. Hoarding is not the fruit of the Spirit. Sometimes clinging to clothes is our way to make sure God provides. He will. You don’t need a back-up plan for if he fails.
So what do you do with what’s left?
Tune in next week for a post on Maintaining a Healthy Closet Weight.