Spring Cleaning
I am no stranger to retail therapy: Saturday afternoons spent with my mom and sister strutting through the same streets of downtown Vancouver, going into the same stores as the week before, and feeling the same feeling of release and comfort. At a 3-foot view, fashion to me was the soothing relief of retail therapy and afternoons spent with the women of my family.
Fashion to me was linking memories to each item of clothing: the black floor-length jump-suit I wore the night I met my 16-year-old love; the green cargo track-pants I wore when I was cast as my first starring role in high-school theatre; the linen tank top that got stained with Twisted Tea at a schools-out beach party. Fashion to me was an amalgamation of memories hiding behind and woven into a composition of fabric, size, and colour.
When I began an internship at a fashion company this summer, I knew for certain that my Saturday afternoons would see the triumphant return of retail therapy. After all, I am surrounded by beautiful clothing all day and I now have a significant discount at my favourite store. But I am also moved back into my childhood home for the summer, falling into old habits and anxieties.
I have felt at a standstill without the addicting structure of university life, and I have been restlessly sitting for 4 months with this urge to move forward and to grow. And so, I have shopped… a lot. Buying new outfits feels like planning for new occasions to wear them. Buying new jeans that fit just-right feels like making a down payment on the land of confidence. Buying that ‘power blazer’ feels like washing away my intern-nerves about my daily work tasks.
“Many of us feel this standstill when we move back home, where your space is almost too familiar, and it feels as though there is nothing new to learn.”
I hadn’t had much time to reflect on this, until I opened the closet of my childhood bedroom to a sea of overflowing new and old clothing. It was time to clean and purge to make room for my new pieces. I cleaned out my closet and my hands imperfectly folded tens of TNA t-shirts of the same size and colour yet each held wildly different associations. I shoved aside Levi’s jeans that I had bought at the time to feel older, more independent, and cooler.
And all of this happened surprisingly easily, though when my highly organized mother used to tell me to clean out my closet, I could only justify throwing out two t-shirts that got stained in a paint-war at camp that summer. Now, with ease, I gave myself a vacant closet that was more ready than ever to be filled with the pieces that make me feel like my best, current self.
Many of us feel this standstill when we move back home, where your space is almost too familiar, and it feels as though there is nothing new to learn. Spring cleaning was a release where I realized that perhaps, this is not true. I was letting go of what no longer served me to welcome new avenues of self-expression and confidence. I was done dwelling on the black-and-white and on the tattered summer camp hoodies of my youth. I was at ease with the fact that I have grown since the last time I lived in my childhood room.
While I’m itching to take this new wardrobe and new-self out of the walls of where I grew up, and I am comforted by the fact my next round of spring cleaning will remind me of where I am today.
Illustration by Aglaia Joithe
