During this past summer, a friend recommended "7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess" by Jen Hatmaker. As I have been dabbling in simplifying my life, I bought it on Amazon. The book describes Jen's journey through 7 28-day periods of fasting in various areas of her life: clothes, spending, waste, possessions, food, media and stress.
I began reading the Introduction and thought it was a great idea. Then I read the first chapter. Her first area was food. She picked 7 foods to eat for an entire month...not 7 dishes, 7 foods. Chocolate was not one of the 7. I began mulling and stewing and just couldn't see myself being successful in this for 28 days. So I read Chapter 2: Clothes. That I could do. I started reading Chapter 3: Possessions, and decided I needed to just jump in and start doing this before I finished reading the whole book, and since Jen Hatmaker said she picked the order of topics randomly, that I wasn't going to let the topic of food keep me from trying this.
So here I am, day 7 of my 28-day clothing fast. I have picked 7 items of clothing (undergarments not counted) and 2 pair of shoes. 1) Church dress, 2) jeans, 3) jean shorts (I live in Florida), 4) pink peasant top, 5) black T-shirt, 6) turquoise short-sleeve blouse, and 7) a jacket. I have tennis shoes and church shoes (which I can where with my jeans and turquoise blouse to dress that outfit up). I also have 1 work-out outfit but cannot wear those clothes except while working-out. The goal for me is to appreciate all I have, including the ability to put off washing clothes for 8 or 9 days. So I have also limited my undies, and socks to 4 pairs. I want to recognize how good I have it and to remember to thank God for all I have. In addition, I want to be motivated to get rid of some clothes.
So after 6 full days, this is not that hard for me. I am not a fashion-minded person and had started wearing the same dress to church months ago. The trickiest part is keeping the clothes clean. Friday night saw me getting home at 11:00 PM and needing to wash my jeans for Saturday morning. So I had to stay up an extra hour to wash the jeans and get them in the dryer before heading off to bed.
Jeans are my normal "go somewhere" attire, but I have 4 pair. Shorts are my normal 'in the house' attire and I have 6 or 7 pairs. It's the tops that will start to become difficult. I guess I care more about what people think of me than I care to admit. I am not looking forward to having the same people see me wearing the same 3 tops over a 4 week period. And the point is NOT to tell anyone (well, I guess anyone who reads my blog will know, fortunately that's not many) and not to draw attention to myself, but to live more simply and to fast from the over-abundance of clothing choices I normally have.
