Oh WOW!

I spent most of my adult life as a struggling single mother. For the most part, I had no necessities. I have always been a 'take care of the family first' type of person. My needs were contributed to the want list, and my wants always came last. This means I never got what I wanted. Including clothes.

My clothes often came from hand me downs for the most part. Those are few and far between. A neighbor, coworker, or family friend recently would go shopping and so decided to clean the closet. "Do these fit?" If not, I'd make them fit.

Most of my clothes have holes or stains to them. If I'm going somewhere nice, I do my best to hide the flaws in them. I work at home so rarely even leave the house. Therefore, nice things really aren't necessary. It's no big deal if the jeans are a bit tight and I have to unbutton them to wear them. The holes in the shirts don't mean much since nobody sees me in them. And since I'm home alone, a well fitting bra really isnt't hat necessary since I can just go without one all day long.

Over the past few months, I've been working on replacing my children's wardrobe as well as my husband's. They do leave the house each day, and I want them to look good and feel good about themselves every day.

As chronicaled in my blog yesterday, I went shopping for myself for the first time in years. The last time I went clothes shopping was right before I found out that I was pregnant with my oldest. He's fifteen now. I've always gotten a new bra here or pair of jeans there, but actually shopping just wasn't in the plans ever.

I happened to have extra money from Christmas budget this year, and was just planning on some jeans. I wound up getting several pair of jeans and several shirts. I dressed after my shower this morning and did a double take. WOW! I never realized how much of a difference clothing actually does make. Just in jeans and a T-Shirt, (name brand t-shirt, not the typical Hanes type t shirts), but I look nice. I mean really nice. Going out in public proudly type of nice!

So now, here's the new plan. Each month, my paycheck is going to be divided into four categories.

1/4 will go to bills. (I'm gonna have to work really hard at a lot of places for 1/4 to cover bills!)
1/4 will go to groceries.
1/4 will go to entertainment/eating out type of stuff
1/4 will go to clothes shopping!

The kids and husband are pretty well stocked as far as clothes go. For the most part, they'll get new stuff here and there when it's needed. For myself, I'm looking to have two weeks worth of every day clothes, stuff to wear around the house. I'll also need  4 professional type outfits, 3 nice outfits for a night on the town type stuff, some dresses and skirts, decent shoes, panties, and bra type stuff, and I may even throw in make up!

My husband said to me this morning "Be careful. You might actually turn into a REAL girl!" *laughs*

So now I'll also be going through my closet. If it doesn't fit, if I don't look nice in it, if it has one single little flaw, it's gone! If I don't go "oooohhh" when I look at it, it's gone. If it doesn't feel good against my skin, it's gone.

I just discovered that I like looking nice. Dangit, there's no reason at all any longer why I shouldn't look nice all of the time. :D