Prune to Bloom! Life Editing Services or My Dream Job

I'm going to jump right in here. In January's post I declared that I had found my purpose in life as an editor and then left my audience with a bit of a cliff hanger. You can let go now. I'll catch you :)

While searching for images I was reminded that there are different levels of pruning: superficial deadheading, surgical dead/diseased/crossing branches removal, and hard cutting back including suckers. 

In life deadheading is getting rid of the blooms that are spent after serving their purpose. You remove dead or diseased areas to maintain the overall health of the plant. Removing branches that are crossed and/or touching prevents harm to the plant. Suckers are offshoots from the roots that are non-producers and just take up resources. These freeloaders are also removed. And in the spring you cut back to the main stems to make ample room for new growth while maintaining a pleasing shape to the overall plant.

All of these pruning methods can be applied to life as well as rose bushes. You can think of any area but I find the easiest example (as well as my favorite) in the closet, literally.

Picture a wardrobe, perhaps your own. Imagine a very full closet with lots of items just waiting to be worn. But the space is packed to the brim which makes choosing an outfit a daunting task if what you really want to wear is anywhere beyond the first couple of layers of clean laundry. So you end up wearing the same things over and over simply because you can't reach the other options easily.

Or perhaps the closet isn't so tightly packed but you still feel overwhelmed by too many options so you still end up wearing the same things over and over again because that feels easy and safe.

And finally perhaps you have a curated closet of items that all are beautiful and waiting to be worn but you feel stymied when it comes to actually putting outfits together because you're afraid of "doing it wrong".

Do any of these feel like they are blooming?

No. To me blooming looks more like this: A well-organized space that is functional yet beautiful because everything is in harmony which also makes the process of dressing efficient and effortless. This space is full of confidence and purpose.

To achieve such a dream closet does not require more agonizing visits to a dressing room or more money spent on clothes that will only add to the mess rather than filling a void to answer the question of "what to wear".

So here's my pitch. If you dream of making the best use of your closet so that you can feel and look your best, then you simply need to follow my PRUNE method.

The idea is to take a mess, take it all out, do a hardcore sorting session, then reorganize in such a way that future maintenance should be effortless.

I'll be the first to admit that this process is not easy. You end up swimming through a mess for a while. It can take hours or days depending on your clothing volume and the time you have to commit to it. I can offer my expert services to help speed things along. I have a keen eye and a DYT background to help create an ideal wardrobe from the items already in your possession. Call me your personal Marie Kondo.

If you are familiar with Marie's work you know that any area can be organized. I'll go ahead and toot my horn to say that I can tackle just about anything. My main areas of work that I have already practiced in my own space are Wardrobes, Interior Design, Landscape Design, and Miscellaneous Organization.

Here on the blog I've already shown my hand in closets (Project 333, A Before and After, The Purge, ). My gardening exploits are here as well. To date I haven't done any interior posts but that's only because my ideas for my own home have been stuck in dream mode but I'm good on paper. It helps that I have taken design classes for interiors and landscapes. As for the misc. category, I've organized my friend's linen closet and junk drawers for fun.

So there's my credentials. This is my dream: to do one-on-one sessions with individuals at the end of their rope, ready for change, tired of dysfunction, needing a light in their tunnel. Granted, my scheduling is a bit limited since I am a mom of four small children with a hard-working teacher for a husband so available time is limited, but I can dream, can't I?

For now I can say that I can offer playdates of assistance, meaning I'll probably be bringing my posse with me but I can make the most of a couple of hours worth of time in the morning. If we're lucky I could throw in an occasional weekend naptime session too. It depends on the area being organized. Perhaps this will be a good summer job for me, but that also depends on my husband's conference schedule.

In the end, this is a dream in which I can fully use my talents as an organizer and life editor. If those skills could be of use to you then let me know and we can see how I can help. At least you have access to my method now.

How to Wear White with Confidence...When You Have Babies

Wearing white has seemed to be the anathema of mommy-hood. Let's face it, white is not the #1 neutral that anyone with kids of any age gravitates toward when considering their everyday wardrobe. 

Such is not the case for me.

I'm wearing my favorite white skinny jeans as I write this and I love it! So, in Fat Amy style, I want to rub some of my confidence onto you so you too can rock it in your type of white*.

(*Quick refresher on Types of white: T1= Winter White; T2= Eggshell; T3= Wheat; T4= Stark White, as pictured below. Tip or darken your screen to see the undertones or lack thereof.)

This post was inspired by a recent conversation with a friend who was despairing at the possibility of not being able to keep whites clean with small children around and all that entails. I offered her 3 solutions to this problem that I will pass onto to you, dear reader, as well as 3 bonus ideas I didn't think of at the time (you know how that goes).

Wash Your Babies

I know the image that haunts you. You are loving your white and then your adorable child approaches for an embrace... with hands and/or face and/or...everything covered in (insert substance of choice). The white is now ruined!

Simple solution: watch your babies, know when they are dirty, wash them immediately when messy project/meal is complete, then continue with the hugs. 

Alternative solution: Avoid the mess to begin with. Be the Nazi mom who doesn't let your kids get messy in the first place, i.e. don't serve your spaghetti with sauce, etc.

Feed Babies at Arm's Length

The second obstacle my friend offered was the fact that she is feeding a small one with a tendency towards projectile spit-up. We do play dates on a weekly basis which end after lunch, so I've watched her feed the baby in question, usually on her lap.

Solution: Use a high chair to get some distance from the source of spit-up. If your child has great skills as to distance projection, wear an apron and if your white is in the form of a second layer (we're not just talking about jeans here) then remove that layer during feeding. 

Cook with an Apron

I too live part of my life in the kitchen and I can't boast of being an especially clean cook. I'm not a total mess, but I still take preventative measures. Yes, I wear an apron even (sometimes) if all I'm making is mac 'n' cheese. I wear it anytime I'm cooking, not just when I'm having a white day. It helps if you have a cute apron that you love. My current model is in shades of blue with tiered ruffles.

Bonus Solution #1

Pants/Clothes DO NOT =Napkin. I know my husband is not completely house broken in this area, but he is not the one wearing white. It's one thing to blame your kids for a mess, but another to create the stains yourself. Avoid this by using good manners. Simple as that.

Bonus Solution #2

I also have a healthy, breastfed baby that poops. This means we have experience with blow-outs. These have been less frequent of late because we finally figured out that she was ready for the next size of diapers. That aside, when a blow-out has occurred you often don't realize it until you have the baby in your lap and by then it is too late. You may also have poop on your pants now.

Solution: Use preventative measures, again. On my white days, I don't pick up my angel, poopy or otherwise, without first having those buns wrapped in the all-purpose blanket that is always at hand. (We are a blankie family.) My theory is that she is poopy until proven otherwise.

Bonus Solution #3

All other solutions and precautionary stratagems in play, life still happens and life sometimes =stains. When this happens my OxyClean stick is my best friend. (Note: I am not affiliated with OxyClean. I just love it.)

I would keep this miracle wand in my travel bag when we were having more periodic blow-outs. Of course, I forgot it on our most recent weekend away, but the beautiful thing is that it works when pre-washing dried out stains as well. And that has been my experience with all the different patterns, with or without white, of our baby clothes. I think she's pooped in every outfit so far and they all come out clean. 

If you don't have OxyClean yet, go get some. (I use the sticks because I feel I have more control with it than the spray offers. Plus our laundry detergent has it too.) Or use bleach as that is what is used on whites historically speaking. 

And those are my solutions to help you bring white into your life. Now you should have (less) excuses for avoiding expanding your color palette with this excellent neutral. I've brought it into my current capsule wardrobe to welcome in the spring season...whenever that truly happens in southern Idaho. 

The Continuing Journey: Maryann's Closet Round 3

Since Memorial Day, Maryann has been able to enjoy her remodeled closet. After Round 1, I had gotten most of Maryann's clothes sorted by Type. When she moved into her new closet she mixed things up a little but had her blouses sorted mostly separated into two blocks of mostly pink and blue. She called her top section of pinks her "happy clothes". 

With Round 2, I facilitated a joint sorting venture using a simple 1 to 10 rating system. Something from an old Carol Tuttle video has stuck with the me and inspires me still. She said something to the effect of we should wear clothes that make us happy. In the rating system this translates to wearing only 7s and higher, with the aim of filling your closet with mostly 10s. This is an idea that is probably in the new Carol videos, but as part of the Lifestyle subscription content that I don't have yet.

So, in this sorting phase, I did the heavy lifting and let Maryann tell me which pile to put the items into. This worked really well since she was feeling a bit under the weather anyway. Happily, we were able to find a good pile of 10s and a substantial pile of 7s in her Type 1 colors to work into a capsule wardrobe in our next round. Here are her tops. See how happy they look!

There was still a hefty pile of off-type clothes that she wasn't quite ready to part with. But we also eliminated about 50% of what she had hung up in her closet in this round. What an amazing amount of purging!

A lot of what we got rid of were Type 3 clothes. She'd already been chipping away at those in the months since Round 1 on her own which was great. She we also able to identity a lot of items that she hadn't worn in a while due to fit and whatnot. 

We were also able to identify a lot of themes in what she likes to shop for so she can continue to find those things in her bright happy colors. Maryann is a big fan of paisley, lace overlays, stitched embellishments, tie dye, and the colors pink, purple, and oceany shades of blue and green. The styles she gravitates toward include peasant tops, button-ups (for riding horses), and blouses with the high-low feature.

 

It was fortunate that I had all four Style Guides to show Maryann so that she could see what I see when I differentiate between the different color families. She was also able to read the backs of them and get more familiar​ with the styles that will support her Type 1 nature.

We found a lot of great basic pieces along with a lot of fun patterns that will be really fun to mix and match. I hope Maryann will have a lot of fun exploring these options. I was able to show her a couple of combinations that she hadn't thought of before that got her excited about this next phase of utilizing her clothes in new ways. I think she's even interested in buying her own DYT course so she can have her own copy of the color cards to shop with. 

In the couple of weeks since this latest transformation, Maryann has been in a very normal regrouping phase. She lost a lot of her old outfit combinations, so she's had to stretch a bit in putting new looks together. As a Type 1, she feels the loss of that 50% decrease in items, but she also feels lighter. Plus, some of the 7s have become new 10s.

To help her feel better about the purging process, I told her about the 80/20 rule (Pareto Principle). In closet terms, this means we wear 20% of the items 80% of the time. What we did was eliminate a chunk of the unworn 80% so she could have better access to the 20%.

If you are interested in buying your own DYT course and feel that I have helped inspire that, please use my referral link to start that process. 

In the meantime I'd encourage you to "shop" in your own closets and sift out the items that don't make you happy for whatever reason. Why spend any time in clothes that don't make you feel great? Who knows, you may even rediscover pieces that can be worn in new and exciting ways that you hadn't thought of before. That almost feels the same as getting something brand new from a store right there. 

Bonus Feature: Remember those Type 3 clothes Maryann was able to release? I took a bunch of them for another friend. Once I got them home I played with them and made a capsule out of what was there.

This capsule is more like a 10 Item Wardrobe, but it would be a great base for a Project 333 wardrobe. It has 3 skirts, 2 vests, and 4 blouses. Just add some jeans, a couple more tops, and accessories and it is set.

Adventures in Polyvore: Illustrating My Project 333 Capsule Wardrobe

Well, it's been so much fun doing the full capsule wardrobe experience the last couple of months that I thought I'd go another round of talking about it. My first three month round of the Project 333 system is almost up. This has been a rather freeing experience. I love everything in my closet, I wear everything in my closet, and everything in my closet works quite well together. You usually can't say that about a normal closet full of clothes, especially if you find yourself complaining that you "have nothing to wear".

I think my biggest secret to having the capsule wardrobe work so well is starting with a pretty tight selection of colors that you know work well together. Here's my color palette from this round.

As a Type 4, black and white will probably always be the base of my wardrobe, and I'm ok with that. But playing with the accent colors is where I get to have fun changing it up and giving spice to a wardrobe that might seem rather one-note otherwise.

Another trick is being able to have all the levels of dress represented in the capsule. From casual all the way up to dressed up, you want to feel like you are ready for any circumstance. This does mean having some understanding of the levels of dress that are appropriate to your life style. I'm a church-going stay-at-home mom, so my capsule might lean more to the casual side. But I also have comfortable items to look amazing in on Sunday's too.

Even though I have worn everything I selected for this capsule, there are of course combinations that I noticed that I wore a lot. These are they. The striped pencil skirt is actually a LuLa Roe maxi, so I actually wore that as "lounge wear" when I didn't feel like wearing jeans (read: jeans were in the laundry), but I still make a point of getting dressed everyday. (I feel like I really don't get anything done otherwise.)

The following are several slides showing just how many different combinations you can make with a capsule wardrobe using items I actually have. Mostly I think the theme here is to pick great basic pieces with a healthy dose of accessories so you can have fun mixing and matching to find new combinations to fall in love with.

The rules of the Project 333 system call for you to include outerwear in the 33 items. Since it is winter here in southeastern Idaho, I have a heavier coat and snow boots out. The lighter jacket is for when I'm just running out to the garage for something or when I'm sitting in our almost unheated computer room working on the blog and such. Plus it wasn't completely freezing when I put this capsule together back at the beginning of November. 

Another awesome bonus that I discovered was the fact that for three months I had one purse out and never felt a need to switch it up. Raise your hand if you are a woman with more than one purse. (Guilty as charged.) Before doing the capsule wardrobe I think I'd change purses on almost a monthly basis because I knew the current purse didn't match the outfit I was wearing one day. With the capsule wardrobe and having a limited color palette with a purse to match, I never had to worry about that.

Now I'm looking forward to creating a new capsule for the next three months, purse and all ;)

My Project 333 wardrobe Winter 2016-2017 by heather-horikami on polyvore.com