I'm off work this week and decided not to post any of my casual yard-cleaning, home-renovating, book-reading outfits. But I wanted to post some thoughts I had late yesterday and this morning because they were interesting and a wee bit surprising to me.

Yesterday my husband and I joined a couple we've been friends with for 15 years in Gimli, our favourite small northern lake town. After a positively delicious late luncheon, we headed into Tergesen's, a charming store. My husband promptly pointed out a pair of taupe suede wedge lace up Toms and said "weren't you looking for beige short boots at one point?". How on earth did he remember that? Does he actually listen to what I say??? Anyway, I ended up trying them on and bringing them home. They are insanely comfy, will work with most everything and can be worn pretty much year round. I don't even mind the Toms label stitched on the back of the boot. When we talked about the booties on the way home, I expressed some concern about the strict shopping budget we were adhering to and my hubby made the point that he felt these were a need in that I have been discussing light coloured booties for some time and wanted to replace the pair I had thrifted with the fringe because now the heel was too high for my knee to handle. In his opinion, a replacement item is not a frivolous purchase.

When I went down stairs this morning to the cedar closet I keep my out of season clothing/footwear in to retrieve the fringed heeled beige booties to send off to Goodwill, I decided it was a good time to clean this closet out. I ended up with two HUGE bags of stuff to purge. I would estimate 85% of the items being purged were thrift purchases. This did not come as a complete surprise to me since many thrift purchases are how I experiment with a trend or style that is out of my comfort zone.

But I started to really think about WHY I thrift so much and it was like I got hit by a lightening bolt. I thrift to fill a void. Most of you know the last year for me and my household has been extremely stressful and somewhat difficult and my thrifting has increased at the same time. I'm using thrifting to cover the unhappiness I'm feeling with respect to a loss of control in my life and buying random things to get that 30 seconds of happiness.

Cleaning out so many of these ill purchased items this morning lifted such a weight off my shoulders, like sweeping bad memories out the door. My closet is significantly lighter now and as a result, so am I. I want to look in my closet and see things I purchased wisely, for good reason and that make me smile and feel good. I do not want to see items that I purchased in some sort of anxiety ridden state that I regret an hour later and end up not wearing.

I also realized by cleaning things out how many lovely items I DO have for fall/winter and look forward to wearing.

In a somewhat related topic, I have also been over eating like mad lately resulting on some pounds coming back - again, this is a result of too much stress. But recognizing this has been like some sort of breakthrough and back on track I go.

If you've made it through this essay, thanks for sticking around. It felt really good to put this down in writing