School uniforms

The Big Boy starts school next week, and needs uniforms.   We have decided to send him to the private school that my husband teaches at, but it means they are a little more particular about uniforms than I want to be!  

He is required to have two different uniforms: day uniform and sports uniform.  (After grade three he'll also need a formal uniform.)   Different shirt, different shorts, different shoes.    At least the hat and socks are the same.  He will also be required to have a house (sporting team) shirt, and a school swimming costume.   This year he can wear his sports uniform all day on the days it is required, but from next year he will need to take it with him and change in and out of it.

Until I actually read the list, I had assumed we would need two day shirts, one sports shirt, three pairs of shorts (interchangeable between day and sports uniforms), a pair of shoes, six pairs of socks, and a hat.   According to my mum, whose seventh child starts high school this year, two sets of uniforms bought on the bigger side should last two years.  No-one wore hand-me down uniforms because she always bought just enough that they'd be worn out before we grew out of them.   However, because we need so many uniforms The Big Boy is not going to wear them out before he's grown out of them.  Hopefully they will still be in good enough condition that The Small Boy will be able to use them.

We have been given some secondhand uniforms, which was kind and generous of the family who was passing them on.   They fit him nicely now, but I anticipate we will be replacing them before the end of the year.  And the quality of the sewing doesn't give me a lot of confidence in their durability.  Mum used to make all of our uniforms, but most schools, including ours, require school logos or specific detailing which means that me sewing uniforms is pretty much out of the question.

He needs to have a pair of black 'academic' shoes, and plain white joggers.  We needed to make a decision whether we should buy expensive shoes, or cheap shoes.  We settled on cheaper black shoes - $25 as opposed to $100 - and mid-range joggers, because plain white are hard to find.   I'm willing to go by trial and error as to whether we should by cheap shoes or expensive shoes, and whether it's better to wear out or grow out of shoes first.   I'm not a big fan of hand-me-down shoes.

But at least we only need one hat!

One less: shirt

I have one less shirt in my wardrobe today, and one less pair of shoes.   Neither of them I actually wanted to get rid of, but the shirt had been eaten by something and was riddle with holes, and the heel broke off my boots.

It was a favourite shirt.  So soft, so comfortable.  If it was such a favourite, how did it get eaten, I hear you ask?  It had 3/4 length sleeves and was made from pure wool.  I live in the tropics, and the weather here is only mild enough to wear things with such sleeves for a few weeks a year.  Those few weeks last year I was wearing maternity clothing, so the shirt has been in amongst a pile of clothes for nearly two years.

To be honest, I have too many shirts with sleeves.  I kept buying them because I really like that style and they were on the clearance rack.  I just kept buying shirts because I liked them, and now I have more 'winter clothes' than I can wear each winter.  Now, to choose which ones to let go....

The boots I let go of broke today.  I'd bought them on ebay for 99c.  Living where I do, I couldn't justify $99 for a pair of boots that I would only wear a few times a year.  I had them for two or three years, and the soles fell apart completely today, and I had to put them in the bin.   The problem with this is that I now have one less pair of shoes that I can wear socks with which means I need to stop putting off clearing out my sock drawer.  I am pretty sure I have more pairs of socks than we have days of winter, and I wear open shoes on most of the non-winter days.

I need to clean out the bottom of my wardrobe, too. It kind of vomited when I went looking for a shirt when winter arrived suddenly this week.  I'm hoping to have plenty to give away by the time I'm done.

I Love Shoes

When I was 19 I had a pair of leather sandals (much like the ones in the picture) and a pair of dark green Doc Martens, and rarely wore my other shoes: a pair of imitation reef sandals, a pair of slippers, and a some old black army boots that I wore to work (I was working in a cleaning job.)  That was all I needed.

Then the sandals wore out. And I bought a pair of joggers so I could walk to work from where I was housesitting.  Then I started my teaching prac and needed appropriate shoes.  Then I was bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding.  Then I needed shoes to go with a dress to wear to the races on Melbourne Cup Day.  Then I had a job where I was on my feet all day and needed a good comfortable pair of shoes. And then and then and then. 

Ten years later and I have four pairs of high heels, one low heel, two sandals, a pair of joggers, black patent knee high boots, black leather mary jane style shoes, a pair of loafers, thongs (flip-flops?), sandshoes, another cute little pair of mary janes with butterflies on them that I love but they hurt my feet (I bought them on Ebay and think I’ll sell them again), a pair of slippers (possibly the same pair I had ten years ago), and my green Docs (yes, I still have them). And last week I threw out two pairs of shoes that had fallen apart.  A couple of months ago another pair of shoes fell apart and I threw them out, I sold my seldom worn Chuck Taylors on Ebay, and I have another pair of shoes sitting in my pile of things to sell.  

I love going into shoe shops and looking at the cute shoes and the funky shoes.  The problem is, the shoes I really like cost a lot of money.  And my foot is a little wider than average, and not all shoe brands make half sizes, and even then some don’t fit.  And I don’t have places to keep nor occasion to wear most of the shoes that I see and like.  And remember those days when I just had two pairs of shoes I wore everywhere... I loved that.  And when I think about it, it’s actually not that broad a range of shoes that I actually like.  I (mentally) screwed up my nose at shoes that my sister had bought recently, and I do that with a lot of shoes in the fancy shoe shops. It’s just that the shoes I love seem to outshine all the ones that I’d never dream of wearing.  

My ideal minimal shoe wardrobe contains high heels, low heels, a comfy-wear-anywhere slip-on shoe, a comfy flat sandal, a pair of shoes I can go walking in, closed in shoes for the cooler months, and a pair of thongs.   Bonus luxuries would include my knee high boots, which I only wear a handful of times a year because it is rarely cold enough (I bought mine for 99c on Ebay because I couldn’t justify the expense of a new pair), and another pair of coloured shoes - high or low heels, sandals, mary janes, doesn’t matter - because that would add a little more variety and help keep my clothes to a minimum. 

If I could only have two pairs of shoes? Black leather mary-janes and a comfy brown slip-on thong-style shoe.

I don’t really need all the shoes I have, I just thought that I because I love shoes, and collection of gorgeous shoes would be a good thing to have.  The truth is, I love having a small range of comfortable shoes.   And it isn’t shoes that I love, it is a particular style, into which shoes often fall.