Closet Makeover Part 2: The Reaping

I thought I had been through all of my clothes last year, but actually I got pretty tired before I got to the back of the closet, and there was a bunch of stuff I just hung onto for no particular reason. Plus, there was stuff in the guest room closet I had totally forgotten about.  Now, I've been quite rigorous on the hanging clothes for my spanking new closet.

My hanging clothes are for work and the rare festive event. (My play clothes are folded in drawers.) What I wear to work each day is tailored pants, a knit top, and a blazer or sweater. Sometimes a men's style shirt. I wear a necklace every day or (rarely) a scarf, and a lapel pin on the blazer. I swore off heels more than a decade ago, though I left a pair of pumps in my desk in case I ever got to meet the president. Then I did actually meet the president, and I didn't wear the pumps, so that is that for heels forever for me. In summer, women in DC do not wear hose, and this summer especially I wore dresses with bare legs fairly often, with sandals when my toes are painted and ballets when not.  Now I have a pair of boots so I can continue to wear the longer dresses without needing hose. I do, however, wear "shapewear" under my dress.

I find I make the same fashion mistakes over and over.  I have bought not one, not two, no, even more, FIVE long cardigan sweater/jackets. The ones that hang down to mid-thigh.  It turns out, they make me look like a huge knit pear, totally accentuating my hips and rear end.  So I wear the sweater once, am uncomfortable whenever I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I put it in the back of the closet, and forget I have it. They look so good in the catalogs!  But I think I've finally learned my lesson. I've put all of them in the box to give away.

When I find something I like at a nice price, I go to town on it. I've got a dozen silk knit tops from Jones NY, mostly in shades of taupe, grey and black. They come back from the dry cleaner on hangers, but I'm going to put them folded on a shelf or in a drawer, now, I think. The better to see them each day. I am out of the dry cleaner habit, and I've also got an extensive collection of cotton tees. But frankly, the cotton ones are old, they really ought to be ironed but I don't iron them, so I think I may try to wear the silk ones more often, as an alternative to buying a bunch of new cotton ones, which would still need ironing. When I get to organizing the drawers I should just dispose of the older tees.  (I did get rid of a bunch of them in last year's purge, but that was a while ago now and they are looking more worn all the time.)

I used to wear a cotton men's style shirt most days. I had them laundered (light starch, hangers) and liked the way they looked. Now, going through them, they seem huge. Not that I've gotten smaller, but current styles are more form fitting. I think most of my clothes are timeless classics, and yet there is that indefinable air of the width of the collar, the shaping of darts, that make things out of date. I've kept a couple of the old, big, shirts to wear as over-shirts for more casual events - no starch, but ironed. My new shirts are more slim-fitting, and are truly wrinkle-free from the dryer (as long as I hang them while still warm).

Blazers and pants get into winter and summer issues. When I assembled my trousers, I had twenty pair of wool slacks! Some of them are a decade or more old - from previous times I've been near this weight. After trying them all on, it was only down to 15 pair. With the couple of pounds I've added back, some that I thought would be big are somewhat more comfortable than a couple of pair that are very slightly too tight. I'm keeping the small ones, but I put them in the back. It's still more pants than I need, but I can't quite make myself get rid of any more, at least not yet. When I sorted by color, I have a bunch of very dark navy (I had to take them outside to natural light to be sure and I wrote on their labels with a laundry marker), a bunch of grey and tweed, but no pair of actual black pants (the only black ones I have are polyester summer weight). The problem is I have six good quality blazers that work with black, and only one of them will work with navy (all but one will work with grey). I've also got some browns in the pants, and couple of blazers that work with them, one a tweedy brown and one sage green. I've got several fancy sweaters with sage green in them that also work with the earth toned pants.

I don't wear skirts, but I have more than half dozen of them, from probably a decade ago. They are all fairly similar -lots of navy, mostly rayon - and they would work well in the summer. But how many skirts looking very similar do I need? Not that many.  Especially not when I wore none last summer.

So basically, I own too many clothes but not all the right ones. How could I possibly buy another pair of wool trousers, just so I have a black pair? How can I go buy a blue-toned blazer when I've got more than enough jackets in the closet already?  Now that I've got all this stuff assembled, sorted, and out where I can see it, I think I should work with it for a while before making any more moves. No buying (yay, my wallet) and no more getting rid of something that fits, not until I've tried wearing it first.

Plus, I might lose those 15 pounds and need all new pants! (It could happen.)

Closet Makeover

I've just had a closet makeover - literally.  Not the clothes in the closet, but the closet itself.

Before

My house was built in 1950.  It's actually really modern for a house built then - there are definite Frank Lloyd Wright influences in the pitch of the roof, the size and placement of the windows, and the open plan with a tiny cramped kitchen.

So no surprise the closet was a single 80" long rod (with very big, if somewhat inconvenient, storage above).  So last weekend I moved everything out, and just now, got convenient stuff installed.

Demo

First came the demo - I had to pull out the shelf and doors. In addition to pulling off the folding doors on the closet, and the sliding doors on the shelf, I took off the door to my bedroom because when it's open, it blocks the closet.  (A peculiar "modern" touch of my house is the trim around the interior doors is not woodwork, but one piece of molded metal. It has the hinge for the door melded in. so I can't switch which side the door opens on. It's a complete rectangle so to take it out completely requires ripping up the hardwood floor.  Either of those is beyond the scope of this quickie project.) Demo is fun, but hard work.  It took some hours with a hammer and saw, but was very satisfying.

Prep

On Sunday, we painted. We did such a nice job the closet installers came in, took one look, and called up the office to say they had time to fit in another job because this one would be so quick.

Ready

So now I have this great space, and I need to decide how to organize things, and what to put in there.  I've also bought a new small Ikea dresser, and pretty much the rest of the weekend will be spent going through all my clothes and deciding what to keep.

When I emptied the closet, I tossed it all into the guest room, and hung a few things in the closet there. I knew I already had a couple of things hanging there, things I hadn't decided to get rid of but knew I wasn't likely to wear.  It turns out it was a lot more than a couple of things. I went through some of it during the original emptying out, and filled one big box of things to give away.  But I don't want to hang up anything in my new closet I won't want to wear, and so this will be a slow process. It might also require a trip to The Container Store (I love The Container Store!) to get some good looking boxes to put things in.

Ready to fill

I'm pretty sure I'm not going to put doors on this closet, but I'm torn on the door to my room. I live alone, and normally sleep with it open. But I do have guests, so there is a need for privacy.  I'm contemplating a nice Roman blind that can be lowered down from inside the room.  I may also want sliding fabric panels to be able to hide the closet contents, but I'm less sure about that.

The best answer for a tiny house like mine is pocket doors, but the wall I'd want to pierce for the pocket door is load bearing. To put a sliding over-the-wall door would still involve complications - when open, a sliding door would cover the thermostat and two light switches. This is all fixable, but like changing my door jam it scales the project up from a few hours and a few hundred dollars into skilled renovation work.

This is stuff that is fun, and easy to think about when on the treadmill or otherwise engaged.

Off to shop at my funky local small businesses!

Walking

Twice this week instead of flopping on the couch to read the paper first thing in the morning, instead I went down and walked on the treadmill while reading the paper.  I went all digital on the NY Times and it's easy to prop my iPad on my treadmill.  Selecting articles and flipping the pages while walking is do-able, though I don't think it would work while running.

I had a couple of medical appointments this week and the empahsis on exercise was notable. Not just for my body, but for my mind, and for stress.  So I'm trying to find the gumption to get back into running. This walking is just the first step, and better than nothing.  "Better than nothing" is my new mantra.

Sadly, my knees hurt badly. I hurt the left one on the ladder cleaning my gutters before the hurricane - a sudden snap and I couldn't bend it for a couple of days. With the enforced inactivity it was fine three days later, but now that pain is back, layered with arthritic pain in both knees.  This morning's gentle walk (half an hour at 3.2 miles per hour) was fine so far. But it's a potential obstacle to running.


One of the articles in the Times this morning says about exercise "more intense for shorter is better". They were discussing longevity specifically, but subjectively, I tend to agree for my immediate benefits. I want to get the heart rate up and get me some endorphins.

But something is better than nothing. And I can feel the blood moving faster than the couch alone would have done.

Food Truck Frenzy

So I went out to walk between our two buildings at lunch time, and had to deal with this. For fifteen years we bemoaned the lack of restaurants within a half mile of the office. And I wonder why my jeans are tight.  But I walked right past, and got a plain salad from the salad bar in my building.

Halal Grill has a nice lamb kebab over salad - the ONLY salad among these trucks - and the biggest line, not coincidentally.

Food Truck Heaven

Baked Empanadas

Cuban Food

More Kebabs

Pizza - not tempting

More Empanadas

The BEST Mexican food?  With no line? The lines definitely reflect  quality.

Grilled Cheese if you need some comfort

Felafal

Subs

Chef Driven is eclectic asian fusian, usually

No clue what Goode serves

Crepes

Korean

This is new - and very very tempting to me

PHO

The pie truck

Yikes!

I pulled out last year's jeans to put on--and they were tight!!!!! Time to buckle down.

Here is the recent trend, since May. Faintly seen is each actual weight, more easily seen is the trend and range. Not sure what I'm going to do, but let's fully acknowledge the problem.




- iPhone uPdate

Storm Surge

I aspire to be competent and self sufficient, to be the one who is in a position to help others who need it. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but after disasters and catastrophic events, I get motivated to further equip myself and prepare for the next event.  I start by ensuring I am prepared, and then think about how to support others.

I lived 25 years in the upper midwest, where it snowed and got very cold (-27F!) and we had thunderstorms and drought. I think the power was off for maybe 25 minutes total during all that time, and never ever was there an excused absence from work. I have always been a camper and sailor so I had some basics like a warm sleeping bag and tent, and thought that's all we needed. But it changed when I moved to DC in the mid-1990s.

I started taking preparation seriously in all the hype about Y2K back at the turn of the millenium. I actually learned about the basic computer programming problem way back in the 1980's (as did everyone else who had anything to do with mainframe operational computers), but no-one did anything about it until time was running out. Then, there was a lot of hype in the media for the general public, but I had a bit of a peek behind the scenes. Working at a government agency that provides safety oversight for complex industries, it was a major focus at work. Contrary to some press reports, it was unlikely the laws of physics would be repealed and airplanes would suddenly plunge out of the sky as the clock ticked over, but there were potentially serious issues of communications and data processing. Supposedly everything was done but how well can you debug the complex interactions of real-life massive systems? So that year, my Christmas presents to the family were a Coleman camping stove (with 3 weeks worth of propane), sleeping bags and other camping equipment. The rest of the family didn't take it seriously, and so I filled my basement with big water jugs and some shelf stable foods, and was comforted to know there was a plan. As it turns out, of course, unless you were playing the slots in Delaware, there was no issue.

In my first three years in this leafy older suburb, the water main broke three times and the power was off for hours every time the wind blew. So definitely, there was a need for some level of preparedness. I started collecting candle lanterns, using them as decorations, but stockpiling lots of candles in the basement. I got a windup radio as my premium for the public radio fund drive.

And then September 11th came.

The hysteria in DC lasted for more than a year. We were a target, and the pressure and reminders were constant. There were the anthrax incidents and we all got trained on how to open our irradiated mail. At a Christmas party that year I met someone who had been rushed out of the Capitol when Senator Daschle's contaminated mail was found, without her purse or keys, not allowed back in for eight months.  Some tiny little 2-seater planes violated the no-fly zone over downtown DC, and congressional staff ran screaming into the streets. I was aware of the plans for relocating to an undisclosed location in the event of more attacks and participated in drills and exercises for various scenarios.

In this atmosphere I made sure I had my canned goods and water ready. I made evacuation plans - a close friend of mine lives over the first mountain west, and I made sure the whole family knew the address and phone number. I bought a motorcycle at least partly to make sure I would be mobile in the face of gridlock.

Isabel struck in September 2003, on a Thursday. We were more than a week without power then. But we had twelve hours of daylight, very comfortable temperatures, and the office was open every day from the following Monday, so there was power for charging. Gasoline was not an issue. The supermarket opened and food was available, though ice was mostly not available, and we through away a lot of food. Except for that, truly, it was no more than inconvenient.

Never-the-less it did spur me to enhance our readiness. Compact florescent lighting had come along, and I added some battery operated lanterns.  I added another radio with rechargeable power. The lanterns and radio were also useful on the boat. Batteries were stockpiled to make them available. I rotated and kept current the water jugs in the basement, and kept a couple of cases of water bottles current, taking older ones up to the boat where they would be drunk quickly. Portable 12-volt batteries became widely available. These are batteries you plug into the wall to charge, and they can be used for starting your car. But they also have plugs right on them - 12 volt round cigarette lighter type, and some have built in inverters to take house plugs (for low power things only). I got one for my house, and one for my brother-in-law (who is often involved in jumping cars.)

The winter of 2009-2010 was very very snowy. We didn't lose power in either big snowstorm (December and February) now remembered as Snowmegeddon, but life was extremely disrupted and we couldn't drive. We were forced to rely on the supplies in the house for a few days, and we did just fine. We have a good collection of hats and mittens, I had just bought new long johns, and I dug up snow pants for the kids. They had adequate jackets, but snow boots were lacking for them. I wrote about how the storm made me want to eat blubber here.  Going to the store before the storm showed empty shelves, emphasizing again how important it was to keep some stuff in the house. The big improvement I vowed to add to the preparedness category after struggling through four foot drifts to get from my house to the rest of the family a half mile away was snow shoes.  Again, not just an emergency item - something to use for fun - but makes me feel good to have another option for mobility.

Then in January 2011 we lost power for several days, after an ice storm. It was cold.  I wrote about it here.  I was extremely unhappy about being so cold, though again I went to work every day and charged things and got warm. Stores and restaurants opened quickly. But before fall came again I added a wood heater to the house. In essence, its an airtight wood-stove that sits inside the existing fireplace box, and sends the heat from the wood into the house instead of up the chimney.  With glass doors to watch the dancing flames, it is at least as charming as ever was the actual open fireplace. It supposedly would heat the whole house. Wouldn't you know it - last winter was the one that never came, and I only used it a few times, and never really tested it out.

We were hot and miserable after this summer's derecho, out of power from Friday through Wednesday in 100 degree weather. But again, while this was massive, the outages were local, and near-by stores and work and restaurants were open as refuges from the heat and for charging. I fired up the propane stove in the back yard for making my morning coffee, but didn't really try to do any other cooking. But cell-phone power management was an issue. But, cell phone communications were always available, which gives me the internet. My brother-in-law had a hole in his roof from a branch, but we didn't discover it until a rain storm later on when water dripped through into a bedroom. Off to the hardware store for a tarp to make our own quick temporary repair. Now he has a brand-new roof and gutters, thanks to his insurance.

I began to think about what it would mean to have some kind of a wider spread disruption, one caused  by something other than downed wires.  I invested in a rechargeable power brick, one that could not only recharge an iphone several times, but also had enough current to recharge the more-demanding ipad. I also bought a camper's solar panel, which can charge some very low power electronics directly, or it can recharge AA batteries which then can re-charge an iphone. My immediate reason for investing in both these items was to use them on a voyage on my boat planned for October, which had to be aborted for non-weather reasons.

Storm supplies - heavy on the sugar!

For Sandy last week I brought in wood to keep it dry, and stocked up several days in advance with water and shelf stable food and started eating up what was in the freezer. I made sure everything that could be charged was charged, including the battery on the Vespa to increase my mobility. I did an ATM for extra cash. Because I just ran out of gumption, I didn't top off the car's gas tank. I kept the phone and ipad on the chargers so they would start out full when the power went off. I talked to my neighbor late Sunday - he acquired a not-quite-whole-house generator (involves flipping many circuit breakers) and was ready to offer assistance if it was necessary. I assured him I was set for the time being - in fact, I had a basement full of candles in case we had a breakdown in the market economy and we needed to move to barter. But of course, the lights hardly even flickered. Which is good, because the water did come through the walls of the basement, and I have an electric pump and a shopvac that helped me keep damage at bay.

As I read about the wide spread devastation, I am spurred to be even more prepared. Total devastation - from fire or other source - that means moving out - is so scary to me I'm not going to focus on that now. Instead I'll think about a longer term disruption where we hunker down.

Shelter first. I need a lot more firewood - what I have would only last a few days. I should have a couple of week's worth to feel secure. I'm also going to buy a couple of blue tarps in different sizes to keep in the basement - I've got a hammer and roofing nails - they just seem like they could be handy for roofs and for other things.

Food. What kinds of food supplies are best? I try to buy stuff I would actually use, so I can keep rotating stock. I like milk boxes, but their shelf life is less than a year, so I got powdered milk. I have broth (good for a couple of years) and plain pasta a-plenty, as well as white rice (the brown stuff goes rancid in weeks). I'm thinking dried tortellini could be useful. Tuna cans for sure. Spam? Surely not. That cold cereal is good for at least a couple of years. Water I've got covered, though maybe not enough for very long.  (On the other hand, I have a ceramic water filter in my camping kit, and there is a (very urban and nasty) stream just a few yards away.)

Transport.  Top off the tank in the car and Vespa, for sure, and make sure the temperamental Italian machine is charged and working.  But I'm thinking bicycle. I have one, don't ride it, I ought to make sure it has air in the tires and works.

Communication. Cellphones, check. But what happens if they don't work? Cellphone coverage in the devastated areas is definitely an issue. Remember family radios?  They were all the rage a decade or so ago. I'm thinking acquiring at least a pair of radios with a range of a couple of miles would be useful. I've got a hand-held marine radio, (and an aviation one, for that matter) but I could see use for the family radios on the boat or other trips, so they are now on my list. They seem cheaper and more practical than a satellite phone.

BTW, I got the idea for the radios from this article which came my way via Boing-Boing.

Obviously, my focus is on my family in all this. But I was inspired recently by a Ted Talk, for a way to get organized, to use social media like twitter and facebook, to provide actual specific and useful information after disaster strikes. The website is here. This would be right up my alley - this is what I did after September 11 at work (organize things) this is what I did after my sister died (organize things) and I could see myself doing this on a wider scale if it were necessary.

Places of Power

A seriously bad day in a seriously bad season... and the busyness in my head needed to be calmed.

I am not religious, but I believe there are benefits to the outward forms of ritual, retreat, and reflection. So I went off the air and did what I needed to do to get centered and calm. There is no grave for my sister, and so when I need to commune with her, I need to go to a still place in my mind where I can sense her quiet presence. Too jangled to sit and meditate, what I need is outdoor exercise. And I need to write.

I have places I go to do this, and they are my places of power. One of my favorites is Great Falls National Park, just 20 minutes from my house. So there I was, on this grey, raw morning, as it spit rain from time to time.  I fled my life and all its complications, needing to just be for a while.

I needed to walk and walk and walk. No facebook, no email, no tunes. Just me and my feet. And the camera.  My thoughts flitted from bad things at work, to the still raw loss of Mary, to current teen angst. Three hours of walking, along the C&O towpath, never far from the roaring hurricane-swollen Potomac. Gradually, the stress in my body and mind began to wear away, as I tired myself out.

I am never away from my camera, and it helps focus me.  Truly, puns aside. I am not seeking the pictures as I walk, but when they find me, I lose myself in the process. Compose, adjust the exposure, recompose, move two steps to the left, change the aperture, hold the camera tilted up, go for a different shutter speed... My camera is a pocket camera easily fitting in one hand, but with total manual control, and I lose myself in it. On my way back, the path over the rapids to overlook the falls themselves had been opened up, and I was totally awestruck. The flow was there, at the end of the walk, as I struggled to capture the force and power of the falls with a still camera. I was finally taken completely out of myself, and was just in that moment.

I picked this place today because it is also connected to Mary.  This is one of her favorite family photos, taken on a great hot summer day in this park.You can't tell, but Mary is pregnant with Clara here (so she is actually in this picture, too!)

I've been here to mourn Mary before as well - this was taken on her birthday in February 2010.

Once I got back to the car, I wrote quite a while, talking things through with her. I was much better equipped to have what was a really crucial conversation about college with my our boy afterwards. It really was all about him, and not about me any more.

And I tracked, too.