One of the recent fallouts from packing up the house has
been the inability to avoid a most dreaded and dire task… cleaning through my
clothes closet. I have literally been
putting this off since I had Chance. (He’s…
oh, what?… TWO now?) I started the task half-heartedly a few
times, moving things into piles and what not. The pile of clothes I might yet fit into (if I lose a few pounds), the
pile of stuff that I might still wear (even though I haven’t in ages), the pile
that I’m definitely giving away if only I could sort, wash, and nicely fold
them all first. I had bins, and piles,
and laundry baskets that never seemed to empty because frankly, I just couldn’t
fit all the clothes into my dressers (yes, that was plural). You all know the drill. We do these things. We just do.

So in a way, it was a relief moving. Time to purge, baby! Screw the mend, tailor, adjust through
vaguely thought out creative sewing project pile. Forget washing, folding, making things pretty
to give away. And definitely piss on the
“I might fit into it again” heap. The
faded jeans? Gone. The stretch mark baring shirts? Gone. The shoes… OK, we keep the
shoes. Everything else is going to
Goodwill! YEAH, baby! I am FREE!  And I am moving to a house with a 200-square-foot closet that I can
fill up with new items. I am WALKING… no, running… RUNNING ON AIR!

And then I came to a screeching halt. As I was sorting out my drawers I realized… I
needed new underwear.

Crap. Just… crap.

We all have our weirdo blocks and one of mine is
panties. Blame it on my environmentally
conscious parents or rather frugal upbringing but I have issues with underwear;
at the point where you need new ones – you know soft and maybe stretched out a
tad, a few holes starting right around the waistband, the tendency to sag, ride
up your butt, or poof out the top of jeans – I have The Hardest Time throwing them away. Why? Because, except for the worn bits at the waistband, all that material is
still Perfectly Good. (And my parents
taught me not to throw out things that are Perfectly Good!) Nice, solid, usable cotton, often in really
cute little prints. The undies are not
so far gone – massive holes, nasty stains (Keen, stop wearing them!) – as to
let me throw them away with a clear conscience, and yet they aren’t comfortable
anymore. 

So what to do with them?!

Sadly, my little mind actually will try to think up creative
ways to use that Perfectly Good material. I could… cut up the panties for quilting pieces. I could… use them as cute sew-on appliqués
for jeans. Ooh, ooh! I could cut them into squares and embroider
them as handkerchiefs!!! I could give
them to all my friends! Or wait… I could
sell them on the Internet! Everyone
needs handkerchiefs. WG’s Cozy
Creations!  I’ll become rich off my used
underwear! (I wouldn’t get sued if I
didn’t use the crotch, right?)

To make matters worse, one of the most common shopping
blunders is buying panties of an unfamiliar brand. Usually one (by which I mean, me) finds a
brand that works and then sticks with them. No deviations, no experimentation, just keep your panties in a
well-known bunch. However, sometimes circumstances
force you to change… such as butt, thighs, and hips changing ever-so-slightly
from pregnancy. Suddenly the old brand
binds a little. And because panty
shopping is not high on my list of priorities (though, it should be) most of
the time I seem to be buying from a catalog or in a place where I don’t have
the time to try them on (and really, trying on panties in the store is NOT the
same as wearing them for an hour under your jeans; you just cannot predict the
ride up factor) so there is lots of room for error. And what happens to those failed deficient undergarments? They sit there in my drawer (next to the old
ones that I still haven’t thrown away).  For quite a long time. Because they are Perfectly Good… they just
don’t work for me. 

Obviously, I have a problem. (And don’t get me started on bras.)

So I’m still at a loss. Keen has offered to rip the panties off me during… um… “intimate”
moments, but really, how many times can you do that before it just turns into a
chore? “Hey honey, here’s another one…
rip ‘em! Rip ‘em good!”  “Yeah yeah yeah…whatever.” 

As a stop-gap, I’ve been contemplating sending old pairs of
panties to C-list celebrities. With nice
supportive messages written out in glitter on them, of course… “Don’t think
you’ll have a singing career but good luck!” or “Caught your last movie… at
least you’re pretty.”  

I figure the C-listers don’t get a whole lot of fan panties.
They might really appreciate them.  – wg