How Your Wardrobe Can Reveal a Boundary
Apparently, I have a boundary with my wardrobe. 🤷♀️
And, from conversations I’ve had with other women, I don’t think I’m alone. Let’s unpack that. (Pun absolutely intended.)
It started with a pair of shoes. Shoes I LOVED and wanted to wear all the time.
But they were so stinking squeaky! Embarrassingly squeaky.
I was frustrated with the shoes for making so much darn noise. Frustrated with myself for not being “above it all.” Even frustrated with the company for making something so beautiful, charging a hefty amount, and somehow not noticing that you could hear me coming from across the room.
And then I was back to being frustrated with myself. Because if I stopped wearing them, did that mean I’d wasted the money?
So what was I meant to do? Ignore the noise and hold my head high? Maybe.
Give them away and hope someone with more patience for squeaky shoes would find them and strut their stuff?
Or leave them gathering dust in the back of my closet because I didn’t want to wear them or admit they weren’t working for me?
Those shoes got me thinking about everything else we keep in our closets. And drawers. And linen cupboards. And totes…
Let me ask you:
Are you wearing the pants that pinch because you don’t want to shop for another pair?
Have you kept the fleece that really isn’t your color because it was a gift, and it feels wrong to let it go?
Do you use the thin, scratchy towels with holes and strings while saving the good ones for company? (Guilty. 🙋♀️)
Where’s the boundary in all this? Or, if “a boundary with your towels” sounds a bit ridiculous, what’s your relationship with these things?
When you keep them, are you choosing what works for you? Maybe you are.
Or are you choosing someone else’s comfort over your own? Trying not to disappoint the person who gave you a gift? Saving the good stuff for guests because somehow they matter more?
I’m not here to make you feel bad about what’s in your closet. The word “threadbare” gets tossed around my house more often than I’d like to admit. Believe you me, there is zero judgment here.
But I am curious about the little choices we make without realizing we’re making them. Sometimes keeping an item feels good. Sometimes we keep it because letting it go brings up guilt, or because spending money on ourselves feels harder than making do.
So here’s a tiny invitation: Look around and notice one thing you don’t really love but have kept anyway. No need to launch a full closet clean-out. Just get curious.
Why is it still taking up space in your life? Is keeping it a choice that feels good to you—or one you’ve been making by default?
You might decide to keep it. You might decide to let it go. Either way, you get to choose.
Even when it’s just a pair of squeaky shoes, that’s what boundaries are about: paying attention to what works for you and giving yourself permission to choose accordingly. 💙
Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels
