Today I donated two more pairs of pants to the thrift store. The first was one of two pairs of jeans I purchased for dating in 2022. I kept the other pair to wear when it is really cold or on the off chance I ever have another date. I was hanging onto the jeans because they fit well, look fantastic on me and are acceptable to wear in almost any situation.
And then this morning, I thought – I never need two pairs of jeans. I only wear jeans a few days a year when it is brutally cold out and I need something thicker to keep my legs from freezing when I walk the dogs. The jeans are Levi’s stretch jeans – but they don’t really stretch much. They are heavy and thick and nowhere near as comfortable as my everyday Prana pants. So they are now gone.
The other pants were one pair of Prana pants that are a size to large for me. Since they are a bit too large, I can wear them with long johns underneath on the coldest winter days. Except, I haven’t done that – I wear my jeans instead! And this year, on the two coldest days, I wore long johns underwear the jeans and it was fine. So, these are gone too.
The greatest part of this process is I no longer have to think, at all, about the “waste” of having spare pants in my drawer that I never use. They are gone. These thoughts will never cross my mind again.
I see some of the crap other people drop off at the thrift store. It looks like a junk yard filled with items that ready for the dump. I hope that my stuff that I’ve donated in pristine condition brighten some shoppers day. I remember, back when I was young and broke, how thrilled I was to inherit a secondhand Champion Sweatshirt and a Columbia coat. They were the nicest clothes I had ever owned up to that time. I cherished them and wore them for years until they fell apart.
I keep thinking there’s nothing else to get rid of, but I keep finding something every few days.
