A good dressing down

I'm reasonably good, though I says it as shouldn't, at dressing my children. What I'm terrible at, especially now, is dressing myself.

Monkey and Mabel are usually pretty nicely turned out. Monkey has recently started dressing himself as soon as he gets up, which is a Miraculous and Wonderful Turn Of Events (remember the boy who wouldn't put on his own socks?), and though he's usually fairly willing to go up and change something if I point out that it's seasonally inappropriate or clashes horribly, for the most part I try to keep out of it and just make sure I like all the stuff in his drawers.

Mabel usually lets me choose her clothes, and while she's basically a shorts and t-shirt kind of girl (make that jeans and sweater in the winter), she does have some dresses too, and she's coming from a good starting point of Cute As All Heck. Her shoes are adorable. I don't buy high-end stuff for her and Monkey, but I trawl the sales racks and the outlet mall and pick up some nice hand-me-downs, and the finished article is put together without being an "outfit" (I don't like matchy-matchy; I prefer mixy-matchy, I suppose) and doesn't have to be taken too much care of.

But I am pretty much a sartorial disaster. I suppose the change of seasons is always when it strikes me, as I delve into my off-season receptacles of boxes, under-bed storage, and the giant suitcase, and once again reject but don't actually get rid of things that were from my semi-formal working wardrobe six years ago, things that are too big but I might need again some day when Mabel weans and I keep eating all these muffins, things that are too small but I might fit again some day when I start exercising, and things that are too nightclubby/sparkly/non-casual but I will suddenly need for a wedding or some other occasion as soon as I donate them to the thrift store. Leaving me with, once again, Nothing To Wear except all these clothes that I can't wear right now. No wonder my husband doesn't understand.

Every year I vow to spend more money on fewer items in better shops; every year finds me excitedly pulling things off the sale rail at Target (because I can't pay full price, even at Target) or out of the clearance bins in Marshalls, and seeing how much cheap crap I can grab that doesn't look actively horrible in the changing room. (If you're in Ireland, Target is like Dunnes, and Marshall's is like TK Maxx.) This is not a good way to Build A Wardrobe.

When I first moved to the US, I was bamboozled by the choice of places to shop. It took a long time to sort the wheat from the chaff and find some stores that had the sort of clothes that fit me and my "look". Where "look" means something simple and non-flashy that doesn't make me look four feet tall with droopy boobs. Additionally, people in Ireland, generally, tend to dress up more than people in America, and I was living in a small college town and associating exclusively with grad students, so I was pretty much always overdressed. Better over than under, I suppose, but now I fear I've gone too far in the opposite direction to compensate, and would have a great deal of trouble mustering anything even remotely semi-casual. Our annual trip home is a time of great stress and deliberation for me and my wardrobe.

And then fashions changed, and stores changed, and I got older, and had exponentially less time available to shilly-shally in the changing room and visit every store in the mall twice before making a decision, and suddenly it's eight years later and I can now understand exactly why the mother-of-three who was also VP of the company I worked for in the late 90s was still wearing suits with shoulder pads up to her ears that she obviously purchased in 1988. (The suits, not the ears.)

I think it's part of the Curse of the SAHM - you don't bring in an income, so you feel guilty spending any more than the bare minimum on clothes for yourself. You're covered, you're respectable, you don't have anywhere to go or anyone to impress, and it's so much easer to buy cute clothes that you know will fit your kids than go into a changing room and try to squeeze your depressingly expanded thighs into something that's the wrong colour and the wrong length but might look okay if you can get a distracting top and a necklace and some better shoes to go with it.

And when I say "you", I mean "I". You are probably much better dressed than I am.

(Don't get me started on shoes. Men can make do with one formal lace-up (lasts forever), one informal lace-up, one running shoe, and a pair of sandals. Anything else is gravy. They cannot possibly be expected to understand how far the gamut of women's shoes runs, and how many different pairs of footwear I might need just to cover the basics. Sigh.)