Wardrobe Cleansing

I'm sorry I've been a bit absent this week - it wasn't intentional, but before I knew it, Friday had arrived and I hadn't posted anything since Sunday!  The kids went back to school on Monday, thank the Lord! The past couple of weeks they've really been fighting a lot - squabbling about the tiniest little things.  It's been driving me nuts and giving everyone headaches - so now they are back at school it's back to the same routine and hopefully the squabbling will subside!

On Monday I started my first official day of 8k training.  The programme assumed that I had run a long distance on Sunday (it was mid-length for me, I suppose - 2.5 miles), so I was to do strength and stretch.  I don't really have a strength routine at the moment, so I just did my Jillian Michaels Kettlebell workout.  Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday will now be my normal run days and this week has been a gentle introduction - 2 miles each.

Today I woke up insanely early for a Saturday - my one and only day to sleep in!  My body clock is cruel to me and woke me bright and early at 6:20am.  After checking my emails and reading some blog posts on my phone, I decided "sod it, I'm awake already" so I got up.  I knew I wanted to be uber-efficient this weekend because earlier in the week I had sorted through my wardrobe, weeding out all the larger sizes that I will never need again, and made a large pile to put up for sale on eBay.  Ever the sales woman - I was up ironing said clothes (so they would look better in photographs!) at 7:30am!

After I ironed the clothes I'm putting on eBay, I thought I may as well iron Josh's school shirts and Rob's work shirts too.  Three and a half hours later I finished!  My 8k training called for 30 minutes of cross training today - so I opted for another Jillian Michaels' DVD (Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism).  I hate this DVD for two reasons - it's 40 minutes long and it seriously makes me work my butt off.  Yes - both of those are GOOD things, and I think that's why I hate it, because it works!  I was pleased when it was finished because I was incredibly sweaty (my eyelids were sweating!!).  It's super-hot here this weekend, so I did the workout around 11am this morning just before the heat got too much.

Now onto my main subject of this post - wardrobe cleansing!  As mentioned above, I'm putting up for sale quite a lot of clothes that no longer fit me.

A small selection

Now, I'm a hoarder by nature - you only need look in our garage to see that I'm not the only one in the family.  However, when it comes to fat clothes, I'm more than happy to say "bye bye"!  There are two main reasons for this - a) there is no easy fallback for me weight back on ("I kept all the clothes from when I was bigger, so I can just pig out and dig those out"); and b) it's easy money for new slimmer clothes!  I'm pretty much a master at finding clothing bargains, in fact the lion's share of my current wardrobe has come from charity shops.

I stumbled across charity shopping about five years ago when, again, I didn't have a great deal of money for clothes.  I found fantastic brand names at ridiculous prices (£2 for a pair of trousers?!), soon I was hooked.  I sort of stopped shopping in charity shops when I gained the weight I originally lost back, because there wasn't a great deal of selection of larger sizes.  When I was bigger I hated shopping anyway because I always felt like people were staring at me.  Now - I can go in and browse with ease knowing that there will be any number of things that will fit me!

So - in a therapeutic way, cleaning out my wardrobe is another step to a healthy lifestyle!  Ensuring that  there is no excuse for me to revert to my old ways!  And just another note on charity shopping - obviously it's for a good cause which is great, but because the clothes are so cheap it means you can shop "interim" sizes relatively painlessly.  Every time you drop a size, there's no need to go an buy a whole new wardrobe in that size.  What I do, is just find some "key" pieces - a couple pairs of trousers, a pair of jeans, maybe a dress or skirt and lots of tops to mix and match.  In fact the outfit I'm wearing now consists of navy linen trousers (£2.50) and aubergine cotton top (£2).  So - you can look great (come on - don't I look great?!) and feel great because you've just donated money to a good cause :-)

Me in a Charity Shop outfit costing less than £10!