The Zen Leaf

L and I were meant to leave on our roadtrip yesterday, but we canceled. 1) The weather was alternating between excruciating high temps and severe thunderstorms for the entire week of travel and being outdoors, and that didn’t sound like fun for either of us. 2) Our a/c went out completely at the end of last week, and we spent 48 hours without anything but a window unit. With our hvac guy still ghosting us, we did finally manage to get ahold of a different person, who came Friday afternoon. It turned out that the motor had blown, so the fan no longer worked, so the unit wouldn’t run (and if we tried to run it, would immediately ice over). The part itself was under warranty, but between the labor and having to replace the thermostat because ours shorted out as well, we paid over a grand for it. Frankly, canceling the roadtrip to get back a big chunk of that money just made sense, especially as neither L nor I wanted to spend long days outside with no shade cover in areas where it was going to be over 100 degrees (or storming). Not after spending several days with no a/c in our house.

(Droplet)

That left me with no plans for an entire week, so I decided to take advantage of the break. First, I did a little photoshoot with the kittens on Sunday. They’re going back to the shelter in a week, as they’re now healthy and over 2 lbs. I’m going to miss these kittens so badly. They’re the sweetest, cuddliest, friendliest, most amazing kittens I’ve had in quite some time. I’ve grown very attached, so this will be a hard giving-up.

(Smudge)

Second, I’m going to start with a new round of semi-KonMari. I first used the KonMari method all the way back in fall of 2015. Since then, I’ve kinda updated things bit by bit as I go along, and honestly, I’ve found that the book was right in saying I’d never need to do the whole thing all over again. It’s been incredibly simple to keep things in balance. I have periodic moments when I do minor sorting, but have never needed to go through the whole big process again.

(Puddles)

Recently, though, I’ve had a bit of an epiphany. My tiktok algorithm plopped me into a series of videos from women who had gone through weight loss surgery and had been unable to stop losing weight. They were in the 90-110 lbs range at this point, suffering losses in hair, nails, bone density, muscle mass, etc. They can’t get enough nutrients to be healthy, and they’re scared. At the same time, I’ve had several friends who lost weight rapidly over the pandemic, mostly due to extreme keto diets, who have just this summer begun to suffer the longterm effects of nutrient-deficiency and rapid weight loss. Then there’s the entire messy clean-eating-to-alt-right pipeline that has been very eye-opening (to me, personally) over the last few years. I hate diet culture. I hate the way eating disorders are being repackaged as “intermittent fasting” and “clean eating” and “natural diets.” I hate that fatphobia is so prevalent and acceptable. I hate the hold that fatphobia and diet culture has on most of us, and I’ve been slowly breaking away as much as I can. Which leads me back to KonMari.

(used to be in containers, now in drawers)

Under my bed, there are four drawers full of clothes of different sizes, each a range of sizes that fit me at different weights. My closet has one full wall dedicated to clothes that can’t be put in drawers but are too small for me to wear. Some still have tags on, because I bought them as “inspiration” clothes. Some items are so small that they didn’t fit even when I was thin, and were “goal” clothes then. (Some of these items were never going to fit, because frankly, my cup size and wide shoulders are never going to allow me to wear certain sizes or styles!) I’ve had many of these articles of clothing for nearly a decade, just hanging out under my bed or in the back of my closet, waiting until the day I might get to wear them again.

(2013: goal dress, which was several inches from being able to zip on the side. I still have this dress and I have no idea why. The lace is even ripped in places. I got it for like $5 at a thrift store.)

When I did KonMari the first time, I sorted through all these clothes, and I got rid of anything that didn’t “spark joy” as she says. But in 2015, I was less than a year out from when I’d fit into most of these clothes. However, it’s been another eight years. And now, I’ve realized that I don’t want to get back to where I was in 2014. Fck BMI. My body looked and felt best at about 15-20 lbs higher than that, but I was too obsessed with the number on the scale and the labels on my clothes to see that. I hadn’t yet learned to view my body in terms of function rather than form. I don’t want to get back to a “healthy BMI” again. Which means I have an entire drawer of clothes I’ve kept for a decade that I don’t even want to fit into anymore. I’ve held on out of some fantasy, as well as a deeply engrained Great-Depression-mindset that my family passed down to me: if I got rid of it now, and then ended up needing it one day, it would be wasteful. But really, isn’t it wasteful for it to sit and rot under my bed?

So this week, I’m pulling it all out. I need that rack in my closet for photography/costume space. I don’t need it for a bunch of clothes I’ll probably never wear. Ditto drawers under my bed, which could have far better uses than holding clothes I’ll likely never put on my body again. I’m sure I’ll keep some clothes that are smaller than I currently fit into, because my body isn’t comfortable and doesn’t function well at my current size either. But there’s no need to keep clothes that are for a body 40, 50, 80+ lbs less than my current weight/size unless I really, really love them. (My wedding dress, for instance!) After all, there are always going to be new things I love, like my new red dress with built in tulle petticoats and pockets! I wasn’t always very good at wearing things I loved as I gained weight, partly my own body-image struggles, partly due to limited plus size options at a reasonable cost. So it’s time to pare down to only the things I love again, and go from there.