I had a silk dress suit, a slim black skirt with\u00a0fitted emerald-green top. The silk was soft and subtly patterned, the top with a perfectly fitted bust and waist, and the overall effect was stunning.<\/p>\n
I bought this outfit when I was in my late 20s, so it was a size 10. I’m not sure when I stopped wearing a size 10, but\u00a0by\u00a0my mid-30s that outfit had absolutely no hope of being worn by me again.<\/p>\n
But, unlike the rest of my size 10 clothes, I didn’t give it away. It was still hanging in my closet a couple years ago – which means I’d had it for at least 25 years, and had even moved it to Dubai and back without ever wearing it.<\/p>\n
Enough, I finally said, and summoned\u00a0the courage to take it out of the closet for good.<\/p>\n
Rather than giving it to the thrift store, I shipped it off to my niece, who IS a size 10 and on whom it would look gorgeous. It was a timeless style, and the silk was still in flawless condition.<\/p>\n
I would be surprised if she has ever worn it (I can’t bear to ask), but it was the only way I could part with it.<\/p>\n
The question is why? What, exactly, was I hanging onto? And why could it only be given to my niece?<\/p>\n
It represented youth and beauty … sure, that’s the easy answer. But I don’t think that is why I held onto it for 25 years. I’d long since discarded my other youthful, pretty clothes.<\/p>\n
When you’ve had something that long, it creates its own inertia with its sentimental value. You can’t get rid of it because you haven’t gotten rid of it.<\/p>\n
But that explanation doesn’t seem right, either. This outfit had no real sentiment attached to it; I couldn’t name a single occasion when I’d worn it.<\/p>\n
I liked to touch it, though. I’d see it in the back of the closet, and fondle the fabric.<\/p>\n
This outfit felt … luxurious. It was expensive, by my standards at the time, and even more so because it was impractical – a dress I knew I wouldn’t be able to wear very often. I bet I didn’t wear it more than a half-dozen times.<\/p>\n
Was that it? Just frugality? I hadn’t gotten my money’s worth?<\/p>\n
No…. the opposite.<\/p>\n
That outfit\u00a0was\u00a0the opposite of the hand-me-downs I have worn all my life.<\/a>\u00a0It was from a brief period when I was really good to myself, when I felt confident that I deserved good things, nice things, that I could afford them because I would always earn good money.<\/p>\n I was about my niece’s age then. By\u00a0sending this outfit to her, I hoped to bequeath her that exhilarated confidence, the deserving of nice things, a luxury of spirit.<\/p>\n I’m not sure when I\u00a0no longer felt that I deserved good things. Perhaps, when I realized that I already had all the good things a person\u00a0could ask for in one\u00a0lifetime.<\/p>\n Or perhaps it wasn’t about deserving them, but rather rejecting them. From traveling in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, I no longer wanted to live a life where I had need of luxury goods.<\/p>\n I bought my freedom with my frugality. Spending less = earning less = working in a job you hate less.<\/p>\n But there was a price.<\/p>\n Maybe I should ask my niece to send that outfit back.<\/p>\n Day 111’s penny is a 1988, my best estimate of the year that I bought the silk outfit.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a silk dress suit, a slim black skirt with\u00a0fitted emerald-green top. The silk was soft and subtly patterned, the top with a perfectly fitted bust and waist, and the overall effect was stunning. I bought this outfit when I was in my late 20s, so it was a size 10. I’m not sure … read more That green silk outfit<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[318],"tags":[60,262,278,276,403],"class_list":["post-6013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-refraction","tag-60","tag-clothes","tag-dress","tag-frugality","tag-silk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6015,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6013\/revisions\/6015"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}