One of my most over-used longest-running jokes about how I ended up out here is my line about selling my soul for a walk-in closet.
Anyone who has searched for a home in the central Denver ‘hoods I love so well can tell you that it isn’t much of a joke, sadly.
Finding good closet space in the city is wack, yo.
I won’t lie – I had a moment when I saw my current closet the first time. As Alyssa-the-wonder-realtor can attest, I had a moment in a few suburban closets when we were on the hunt for a place out here. The idea that NOT ONLY would we have enough closet space for our clothing, but we could BOTH house our things in the master bedroom? Downright nutty and intoxicating. Fess up city girls – how many have separate closets? Keep a shoe horde in the pantry? Hell I had one friend who kept sweaters in the OVEN (not a big cook, obviously.)
So my giant closet and I have been getting along famously, and Jr has his closet all to himself instead of not having one at all sharing with mommy
BE THAT AS IT MAY…
I had a wardrobe crisis of EPIC proportions on the way to happy hour tonight, and it reaffirmed that I just don’t know how to outfit myself (I almost said “how to outfit my rack” – but that situation is just a whole different therapist’s couch post, m’kay,) for AT LEAST half of the situations I come across in the burbs.
Here’s the thing. I am DOWN with getting dressed in the city. Be it drinks, or dinner, or a quick lap around the park with the stroller, or maybe dropping by a friend’s place for a visit, or the ever-popular impromptu shopping jaunt? Urban Me had an outfit (or 5) for that, No problemo.
The same sitch, in this fishbowl, is a whole different ball of wax, people.
So tonight, while attempting to dress appropriately for a celebratory drinks and dinner incident at a casual but independent, adorable little place in honor of a lovely couple’s anniversary, my giant closet and I went to war. No prisoners were taken, and I am still not sure if I can truly say there were any survivors.
Everything looked either too done, or too dumpy. There was no in between.
… And for land sakes – in a closet that size with a wardrobe that just keeps growing to fill it all up – the option anxiety was crippling. That which I love has betrayed me AGAIN; much like the time the discarded nacho container flipped up at me on the road and splattered liquid cheese all over Frederico Escapé.
Too much of a good thing while trying painstakingly hard to NOT stick out like a sore thumb.
A crisis of biblical proportions was waged in that closet tonight – oh the horror of the pile of shoes and skirts and scarves and tears… Oh the fashionable humanity. Frogs rained from the vaulted ceiling. My tears of frustration lasted 40 days and 40 nights while Potter-the-wonder-dog fashioned an arc from the hamper and marched my shoes in, two-by-two. (ok – that may not be EXACTLY how it went down, but it was desperately close.)
I still can’t even really process the momentousness – there hasn’t been a melt-down like this since the great “pregnant and bloated but no one can know yet” wardrobe slaughter of Fall 2010. No sweater, clutch, or dress was left unscathed. It came from nowhere, was vicious and intensely damaging, and then blew right out, just like the crazy thunderstorms out here that come in late summer and early fall.
I can’t decide if it is time to hit up the Kohls and surrender, or rock every vintage EVERYTHING I could ever hope to find in the depths of that giant tomb of a closet and give the whole place a big old middle finger to end all birds.
Two steps forward – nine steps back, it seems.
But the question is – which shoes should I wear for the stepping?
Reluctantly Suburban 