Love them or hate them, lockdowns are part of our present day reality and we get to choose whether we see them as a pain in the proverbial or as an opportunity. I guess it’s the same as that glass half empty or half full saying we’ve all heard a million times.
Life is what you make it.
So if you are the type who sees lockdown as an opportunity to tackle a juicy project then have you considered getting stuck into your wardrobe and giving it a complete makeover?
You might like to stop for a moment and check in to see if the thought of this sends anxious chills throughout your body or ripples of excitement?
Personally the latter is true for me.
Even as a teenager according to my mum and her observations of my tidying/decluttering habits, I have always been an all or nothing type when it came to tidying up. There is something deeply satisfying for me in pulling everything out from the deepest, darkest corners, cleaning properly and rearranging to end up with that fresh new start feeling.
So what’s great about being a Wardrobe Coach now, is I get to satisfy this part of myself every time I help a client transform their wardrobe and I love it!
Something that I also love is living in a share house.
Why? Because there is always an interesting topic of conversation going on in the kitchen between our widely skilled, well-read, flatmates and even more so during lockdown because someone is always in need of a cup of tea.
One of these awesome flatmates is an exceptional homeopath who happened to be in the kitchen the afternoon I got home from my new client. On the drive home I had been pondering the phenomenon of hoarding, specifically from a clothing perspective. (The reason being I am day one into a thirteen day transfemation process with a client I will call Sue, who was struggling to let go of a considerable number of her vintage clothes.) I was wondering if it is the quantity of garments that would classify one as a hoarder, or, is it more about the persons lack of ability to let go of clothing they don’t wear, doesn’t fit them, belonged to their deceased mother and all the other justifications behind why they can’t?
So out of curiousity, I asked my flatmate if there were any homeopathic remedies that had hoarding in their repertoire. Of course there were! One that immediately came to her mind was Sulphur. Sulphur homeopathic people are capable of seeing the beauty in lichen spread artistically over a rusty old car, appreciating the innate beauty in things that others might not see. They are usually the ones into sustainability, history and the searching for meaning.
On the flip side of the coin, the second remedy Arsenicum, are people who would see the same rusty car as a pile of junk and need to take it to the tip immediately. They are the super tidy people who can’t cope with germs of any description and are constantly needing to scrub or put something in its proper place because of their fear around possible health hazards.
As with all remedies there is a spectrum that swings between the healthy and unhealthy ends. A Sulphur person at the unhealthy end is the one who has a hallway filled from floor to ceiling with newspapers collected over the past 50 years, because you never know when you might need them right!
Fascinatingly, Arsenicum people can also be seen as hoarders, but they have a possessiveness that can turn into a compulsive collection of anything that may have some conceivable value in the future such as objects or money. As such they don’t have the poverty mindset like Sulphur do, instead they have a sense of security because their home is an abundant warren of valuable items squirrelled away for the future.
Of course with any remedy there are so many pieces to the puzzle in discerning the best fit so this is not an attempt to prescribe one for Sue, more an avenue of exploration into what’s behind her anguish and resistance to letting go of certain items in her wardrobe.
What I find fascinating about this topic is that Sue’s struggle is not the truth for other women I have done wardrobe makeovers with. Some are able to let go of clothing without batting an eyelid which is why I can’t help but feel the answer lies somewhere in the story behind the garment.
So back to Sue’s place – we had spent most of the previous day pulling every item out of her walk in robe following the system I created where each garment that comes out gets placed into one of three piles. The ‘love it’ pile, the ‘unsure’ pile and the ‘let it go’ pile. Once all their clothes are out of the wardrobe and in one of these piles, the next step is to go through the ‘unsure’ pile with the aim of discovering why it didn’t go into either of the other two. The most common reasons seem to be: it doesn’t fit properly, it needs altering, it doesn’t match anything or it belonged to their mother and they can’t possibly part with it.
My role, is to guide her in finding the best solution for all of the garments in this pile. (Just quietly, I never would have thought how fashion design and Transpersonal Art Therapy could work so beautifully together but thanks to my years of training in both of these fields, I can pretty much offer practical or emotional feedback for every garment a client is unsure about.)
Now Sue was finding her unsure pile to be rather challenging. I would see her pick up the top garment, hesitate for a few seconds then bury it towards the bottom because she couldn’t deal with making a decision about it. We had a light-hearted joke about what she was doing and I reassured her that 1) letting go of something that you love and that holds treasured memories is hard and 2) I wasn’t leaving her house until every garment was gone from that pile so let’s unravel what’s really going on behind the garment. She laughed knowingly and I felt something inside her relax just a bit.
“So tell me about this dress, what is it that you love about it?” I asked. Sue began, “Well I love the fabric, it’s a crepe de chine you know, beautiful quality and just look at the buttons! It looks like it would still fit me, I have never really been sure about the colour, but I think I could wear it now. Look at the detail, the way it was made. Clothes are just not made like this anymore.”
I did agree with all of her points but when I looked closely at the dress I started noticing all the small tell tale holes that moths had enjoyed a bite or ten and pointed this out to Sue “Oh no, I didn’t notice that before, oh there are so many holes. Oh and look it is actually stained under the arms too. You know I have probably had this for 20 years and never worn it, but I love it.” She sighs deeply and hugs the dress like a long lost friend.
I said “I can see how hard this is for you, but it is full of holes now and they will be very noticeable if you darn them.” Sadly Sue agreed. I could feel her disappointment as she commented on the quality of the fabric again simultaneously having a light bulb moment when she realised it was the ‘feel’ of the fabric that she was particularly attracted to. The fabric and the style.
So I suggested that we start a sub pile for garments she can take a pattern from and remake herself. She loved that idea and for the second time I observed the tension in her relax just that little bit more.
However that was just the first of about thirty so we still had a way to go!
As we went methodically through each garment I patiently listened to justification after justification tumbling out of Sue’s mouth in a tone of voice that pretty clearly told me her heart knew it was time to let it go but her ego was caught in a past belief or story, holding on for dear life like one would cling to a branch in a raging river. But that’s what our ego does, it doesn’t like change and it will use whatever experience it can dig up from our past to ‘save’ us from experiencing any degree of suffering again.
So each time the justifications started rolling, I would listen with my heart, address the practical aspects and then enquire as to what the real story was underneath her ego’s resistance.
I could feel something in Sue soften and open up with each backstory shared, each realisation felt, each decision finally made.
At the very beginning of my wardrobe transfemation process I give clients a workbook with some questions that help them tap into memories from their past to reveal their clothing story. This is what makes my wardrobe makeovers unique, in that I know from my Art Therapy training and own personal development journey, that it is these old stories that keep us stuck in habitual ways of being. Including habitual ways of dressing. It’s not until we unravel the threads behind why you haven’t worn pink since you were nine years old that we discover that the colour pink was simply the symbolic representation you attached to the situation that occurred when you were told that girls were weak. Therefore, avoid being seen as weak at all costs. Nine year old’s translation = don’t wear pink. (This was one of my stories by the way).
One of Sue’s memories was how her mum used to make her and her sisters the same basic skirt in a few colours. She always got red or blue because her mum thought those colours suited her best. They were then handed down to her sisters. It wasn’t until something was threadbare that she would get something new. Clearly her parents were quite poor and their parents had been in the war so there was a strong element of poverty consciousness woven through most of the messages Sue got from them during her youth.
During Sue’s makeover, what was really interesting was the number of times she would put something on from her unsure pile of clothes and proceed to say that she couldn’t possibly let it go because she had hardly worn it. Translation – it wasn’t thread bare yet!
Sue started to see that her attitude towards clothes up until present day, as a woman in her late 50’s, was to wear something until it was pretty much thread bare. Only then would she give herself permission to buy something new, or at least acquire something pre-loved from an op-shop. I’ve found there’s a deep value in doing wardrobe makeovers for women over 50.
So if we return to Sulphur and Arsenicum in terms of Sue’s struggle to let go, I can clearly see that she loves to collect vintage clothing which is in the realm of Arsenicum however, the Arsenicum person would have had the garments stored immaculately so that they did not end up with moth holes throughout like Sue’s did. Also her respect and admiration for the quality of workmanship and the actual fabric itself suggests she is a Sulphur type who is able to appreciate the beauty of the lichen on the rusty car. Sue cares deeply for the earth and does not like wastefulness, which compounded with the poverty consciousness her parents modelled to her, also informs me as to why her garments get worn until they are threadbare.
Like I said at the beginning, we may not be able to choose to be in lockdown but we can choose to empower ourselves during it and do something significant with our time. So if you are feeling inspired to get stuck into your wardrobe, you can join my email list and access a complimentary 10 step DIY wardrobe makeover guide.
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