List-Making Challenge

Most people who know me very well will tell you that I’m a very organised person. Often this borders on pedantry, but it’s just who I am and how I do things. Part of this being organised also means that I make lists for pretty much anything that I feel is either important or in need of being less chaotic.

How is this a challenge for me then, you ask. It’s a challenge in that my usual day to day lists are fairly mundane: things I need to do, things I need to buy (only sometimes things I want to buy), stuents at work who have been naughty enough they need to be written home to, books I want to read so that I don’t forget any etc. With the exception of the last one they’re not particularly exciting or princessy – and the original challenge asked to make a list which would be more Lolita/princess-like, full of inspiration and positive energy rather than boring and energy-sucking. Not just in substance, but in style too. This was to be a special list which looked so enticing and inviting that sticking to it would be fun rather than a chore.

Since I’ve been feeling rather glum about my usual work attire (comfy, but dull and repetitive), as well as almost guilty about having so many other clothes that I simply don’t wear, I decided my list would be one of possible work outfits. The only criterion: no trousers allowed!

Making this list coincided with me doing some rearranging in my wardrobe. Since I was to change what I wore to work, I wanted to move all the clothes I should be wearing so that they were more accessible and visible, thus reminding me that I intend to wear them. I took out some of my pretty letter paper I bought in Japan and decided to use my most treasured pen of all: my Mar Plast one. I’ve had it for years, but only ever use it for the most special occasions. Why? When I was a kid, this pen belonged to my Dad: he kept it in its box and I admired it so much that one day my Dad said that when I finish my first ever story (that was around the time I started writing fiction), he’d give me this pen, but I was to use it only for writing fiction. That’s how I got it, and while I know it’s a little silly, I still value the promise I made as a what, 7-8 year old girl, though as you can tell, I sometimes use it for non-fiction things as well.

But going back to what I was talking about, I quickly realised that I had tonnes more work outfits than I thought I would. I only wrote some, treating the list as a starting point and something to inspire me in the future, because if I wrote literally everything, it’d be good ten pages long! I could mix and match my blouses with my skirts quite freely, and if I didn’t have to walk uphill to work, I’d have even more options simply by being able to wear a variety of shoes with the same outfit. I also deliberately only included skirts in my list, despite having a few perfectly good dresses, as I was adamant about using all those blouses which I neglect so much.

Since writing this down I have already worn some of the outfits specified above, but also remembered about some other pieces I had and created new ones. I’ve gone like this for two weeks straight and I still have plenty more options I haven’t worn yet. Not that this stops me from looking at obtaining more clothes. Shame that from gorgeously warm and sunny the weather took a turn for the worse again, but I’ll perservere in my resolution to not wear trousers. Eventually I’d love to be able to ditch them altogether, as great as they can be (especially the vintage ones), but as this is linked to another bigger topic, there’ll be more on this later.