My bedroom closet is bulging. There are, by my best estimation, 24 shirts, 10 pairs of pants and six or seven dresses.
I do not often wear the dresses, given that I’m not really a dressy kind of gal. I do not often wear the dress pants either, given that I’m rarely at an occasion where I’d need them.
Of the 24 shirts? Well, this is how it goes.
The husband, for whatever reason, was poking around my closet recently. I think he was missing a dress shirt and wondered if it had migrated to my side my mistake.
“Look at this!” he said, pulling out a silky, purple top. “It still has the tags on it!”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll get to it eventually.”
“And this!” he said. He’d found a pair of herringbone slacks, also with the tags.
“They’re really nice!” he said. “Why don’t you wear them?”
“I’m not sure when I’d wear them,” I said. “But I’ll get to them eventually.”
In truth, eventually seldom arrives. In truth, when I visit my closet each morning, my hands tend to generally make their way to the same old things. It’s as if my hands have a mind of their own.
They rather like the Levis. They’re pretty fond of the jean shirts. They like the hoodies and the sweatshirts and the flannel tops, which believe I’ve worn for 16 days of the last 30.
My closet behaviour, it might be noted, is akin to the way I act in the kitchen. We own, oh, 47 coffee mugs, but when I’m about to pour my brew in the morning, my hands — again, the hands that have a mind of their own — tend to make their way to one of two. They like the one from San Francisco and the one emblazoned with a bicycle.
Go figure.
I would not, however, ever consider tossing the other 45 coffee mugs, and not simply because we might one day have four dozen unexpected guests arrive on the doorstep.
I would not think of tossing them any more than I would think of tossing the herringbone slacks or the silky, purple top.
And so, the closet continues to bulge, as does the kitchen cabinet.
I can’t really say if I’ll mix it up and choose something other than jeans. It isn’t up to me to decide. It’s the hands that make the call.
