I’ve been low key hoarding clothing for all of my adult life, to the extent that whatever closet and drawer space I’ve had has allowed. Thankfully we live in NYC so that’s not a ton ha.

I’ve been going over all the things I’m keeping for kind of impractical reasons but maybe giving the wrong impression here because overall I think I’ve done a decent job of letting things go.

I have temporarily embraced the Mom Frump.

But I don’t care as much about the hottest person I know as I do about not getting burned out on trying to look nice while taking care of two children.

I once saw the advice to ask yourself if you would be embarrassed to wear what you own in front of the hottest person you know.

Baby is still tugging at my collars to amuse herself and occasionally festooning me with stains so it’s nice to have plenty of things that aren’t too new.

Aside from the sentimental stuff I am keeping a few things that maybe I shouldn’t due to them being a little overly worn, but they are functional parts of my wardrobe.

A fancy but kinda immature bright red cocktail dress that I have absolutely no foreseeable occasion to wear but I’ll be damned if it isn’t super cute and fun.

Some hand sewn dresses made and worn by my mother and her sister that are beautiful but a touch too small for me now.

My old metal concert tees have been sitting in the bottom of a drawer, relatively untouched, for ages, but I’m not ready to part with them yet. For example I’m not sure of the last time I listened to Children of Bodom so I feel like it would be false advertising to wear the shirt.

Other things I kept without anticipation of wearing them often:.

My very first thong, which I tricked my mother into buying for me by stashing them into a lump of similarly colored but more substantial underwear before we reached the checkout counter at Macy’s while hoping she wouldn’t be paying too much attention to the cut of each panty as.

A maroon corduroy pleated skirt that my mother bought me from American Eagle when I was in middle school. At one point they developed a tear, but my mother repaired it with impressively color matched thread.

A pair of sweatpant cutoff style shorts that my older sister owned before me when we were in middle school. They’re very short and say “abercrombie” across the butt. They were deemed only suitable for house wear, but I considered them quite scandalous and thus coveted them.

A tie-dye T-shirt that I made with my Girl Scout troop in 2nd grade. It still fits, since we’d each been given an Adult Large t-shirt to dye. We’d made them with squeeze bottles filled with fabric dye rather than by dipping, and being the sort of child I was, I distributed my dye.

Some things I feel I need to keep just based on how long I’ve had them for, in addition to appreciating the memories attached. Some selected examples:.

true that that I’m nervous about inviting guests in here ahaha.

uh, is getting buried alive under a falling stack of memories inside one’s overstuffed psyche a thing.

That’s it, I’m a memory hoarder.

Listen, internal devil’s advocate, I consider it important to my sense of self to be able to access a large quantity of memories. Too large a quantity to be kept dusted off according to their proximity to trains of thought alone.