Two Things

Things I bought and things I used up

Welcome to my occasional, when-I-feel-like-it bonus content about secondhand shopping and selling, minor fascinations, passing fancies, and old stuff! This is the same subscription as Just Some Lady and you are (obviously!) free to skip it.

I did a bit of seasonal shopping recently, so let’s get into it.

I’ve worked from home pretty much full-time since 2015, when the tech company I worked for was acquired by Oracle. (Nobody was being fucking weird about WFH at this time; I’d just like to note!)

Obviously, this changed how I dressed because I only needed a few office-appropriate things for work trips or occasional in-office days. I went from what I’d call smart business casual to no-rules-at-all, more or less overnight. In 2015, even the tech company I worked for was a no-jeans place. Our founder was very image-conscious, and the whole office braced for the days when his Trunk Club shipment was due (RIP, Trunk Club).

If going full-time WFH changed the way I shopped and dressed, the pandemic really screwed me up. If you’ll recall, this was the heyday of matching sweat sets, stain-resistant day-to-night loungewear, the Homecoat, Allbirds, and other direct-to-consumer trends that are now in their flop era. There were many days I never got out of my pajamas. When I re-emerged into society, I’d accidentally forgotten how to dress for most everything. It was very disorienting.

TL;DR: It has taken me a while to reacclimate to buying stuff that is appropriate for working from home AND for going out. It occurred to me that my collection of H&M tunics might need to be retired (sad!!!). So I set about finding some new and new-to-me things that would see me through summer and beyond.

I bought this dress from COS off a Kim France recommendation, and I like it a lot. It’s a cotton-blend jersey and feels casual, but the cut makes it a little fancy. You can see it much better at the COS link, and I swear I’ve cleaned my mirror recently, but whatever.

Do you like the Inception-themed closet doors? Why this ever seemed like a good idea to the previous owners, I will never know.

Last year, I bought a couple of versions of J. Crew satin slip skirts on final sale (and still on final sale in a few sizes), and I’ve just been wearing them with T-shirts. I did take a few pictures of one version of this outfit, but I chose a mirror in my house that, upon inspection, is even smudgier than the one above, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. This is a very 90s coded outfit! I usually just wear it with my EVA Birkenstock house shoes or my Saltwater sandals if I’m going outside.

Finally, two summers ago, I had an Old Navy dress that I liked but bought in the wrong size. I tried to make it work, but the fit was too awkward. I sold it on Poshmark and found one in the right size.

Finally, if you spend any time on fashion Substack, you know you can’t swing a dead possum (sorry, my people are from Appalachia) without reading about these or these or these. I don’t want to pay any of those amounts for any of those pants! If you just like the look, may I recommend these from the Gap? They are not “cheap” per se, but they do go on sale, and I also bet they are on Poshmark somewhere. I like mine a lot:

I am 5 ft 4 and opted for the petite length.

Obviously, I have not touched that denim jacket with a ten-foot pole since the Death Heat began in earnest early last week. But the pants are good! The drawstring is on the inside, and they have pockets. And I saved about $1,000 by not buying The Row. I particularly like wearing them with my platform Converse.

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I am, it probably goes without saying, a person who is susceptible to getting a case of the shoppies on any given day. I also have a long history of believing that a new product (whatever it is) will fix my life entirely, which puts a lot of pressure on a lip balm or hair-styling product. And for the most part, I have developed good coping mechanisms for these compulsions, but I AM NOT PERFECT, and sometimes I falter.

When I began job hunting in January, I dealt with the occasional shoppies by keeping a list of stuff I wanted to buy. Every once in a while, I would look at the list and cross stuff off. I wanted these green Adidas very, very badly for a time, and I still think they are cute, but I decided I could live without them. So I crossed them off. This worked pretty well! There are many things I thought I super wanted, but as it turns out, I barely think about them at all now.

I also looked in my bathroom drawers and cabinets and started trying to use up things I’d already bought. I am pretty bad about falling in love with, say, a lipstick and then throwing it over for the next passing fancy. I decided I would start using these things again, and that if I used them a few times and really hated them, then I would throw them away (I did this with Sun Bum sunscreen lip balm, which I found extremely gross) and NOT FEEL BAD ABOUT IT. But mostly, I found I liked the things I’d bought; I’d just been distracted by other shiny new things.

Thus far I’ve managed to use up a tube of Chanel Rouge Coco in shade 434 (I have pretty much always re-purchased this for the last decade or so and will certainly buy another one; I meant to buy one at duty-free when we traveled in April but didn’t have time), a tube of Jones Road lip balm, two tubes of different Cover Girl brow gel, a bottle of Aveda Thickening Tonic (this is actually very good if you, like me, are a lifelong victim of fine hair), a refill-size package of L’Occitane Amande shower oil, many sample-size spools of dental floss from the dentist, and a Tarte lip balm. Oh, and a Bobbi Brown lipstick that I liked a lot. I was sorry to see it go, but I have many more lipsticks to work my way through before I can buy another one in good conscience.

I enjoyed this experiment, and it certainly re-opened my eyes to all the stuff I already have. I suspect I’ll never be permanently cured of my magpie nature, but it was nice to cull some things by using them rather than going on a rampage and tossing a bunch (though I must admit I have a lot, a lot, of lipsticks that I really need to part with, no matter how nostalgic my MACxLorde tube of Pure Heroine may be).