My fashion sense…it’s sufferin’!
I’ve got this habit, probably formed in childhood, of not wearing nice clothes at home.
When my sister and I were kids, when we got home from school, we changed into our “play clothes.” Usually it was old jeans too shabby for school, sweats, or some other oddments of attire that had been downgraded from public acceptability due to stains, mends, poor fit, or general unsightliness.
Except for a brief, shining stint in college where I remained in a state of semi-clothed ready-to-go-out-ness, I’ve maintained that sort of grungy, Mr. Rogers-esque ritual of doffing the work clothes and donning the grubbies when I get home. And right now, when I’m fairly rarely not at home, I’m fairly rarely wearing anything other than saggy-butt old jeans, paint-stained, oversized khakis, and hairy, darned, muddy-colored sweaters.
You may think I’m kidding, but I’m so not.
Because I may well be spray painting a bike, playing fetch with a slobbery dog, cleaning house, or baking something messy in the kitchen, I don’t want to wear anything delicate or that hasn’t already been at least half destroyed. It’s pretty amazing how long it takes to completely finish off a pair of pants, too. I mean, I am not a careful woman in my at-home clothes. I’ve been using the above pair of khakis for slumming around in for over two years, and they’re not noticeably much worse than when I downgraded them from my work wardrobe after the Great Toner ‘Splosion of ’07. We’re talking kneeling in the garden, crawling in and out of dumpsters, drying my hands on the seat, sticking greasy tools in the pockets. It’s like they hit a certain stable level of yuk and will get no nastier. So I’m stuck with them for the foreseeable future. Say what you will about GAP, you pretty much cannot completely destroy their pants.
Anyway, one of the many things I’m looking forward to about having a job again is having a good reason to wear clothing that doesn’t suck! I have a lot of pretty nice-looking stuff in my closet (especially since the big project-finishing push I’ve put on since returning from our cross-country trip) and nowhere to wear it. I’ll probably still dress like a bum in the evening and on weekends, but at least I can go around looking respectable and occasionally halfway chic during the day.
I am SO on your wavelength. Like you, I do some pretty grubby stuff when I get home from work and I sure don’t want to wear nice clothes doing them! I happen to like that outfit you’re wearing, by the way.
ha ha, I totally do the same thing. I haven’t worn a dress or skirt in … months. In an attempt to not ruin my “nice” clothes, I have been looking like a slob for the past few months. I have this one sweatshirt that I really need to just burn.
I actually had a pair of pants disintegrate on me during our coast-to-coast tour. The butt just completely fell out of them. They were simply visually offensive before the butt thing, but they were a complete trainwreck after the seat tore out.
I want to know what you were doing posing in my clothes!!!
I’m in my other favorite hideous hairy sweater today – it’s rust colored.
I’ll change into proper clothes when I get to work, but for the ride in (in the winter anyway), I wear huge quantities of EVERYTHING, particularly wooly sweaters and hiking socks.