My Recent Experiences as a Clothes Horse: Bad Luck or a Reminder from the Universe?

The past few days I have had many thoughts of clothes. Yes, clothes. We've had an influx of clothes for Noah lately - from his birthday, my husband's finds in Uncle Henry's (the local swap-and-sell guide), and a friend who gave us bags of hand-me-down boys clothes when she found out that her baby-to-be is a girl. So I've been washing and folding, sorting and refolding tiny little rompers, Hawaiian shirts, sweaters, bucket hats, and many other wonderful and precious pieces that he'll be able to wear in the coming couple of years.

I used to think I would keep all his outfits, because they were all so sweet and tiny and wonderful. Now as they overflow his bureaus and lie in piles on the twin bed we set up in his bedroom, it is becoming more of a blur in which just a few pieces stand out as being favorites. And even these just pale in comparison to the adorableness of the boy himself, so I've found myself wondering how long we'll hang on to these things. These precious things.

Some of my ability to anticipate letting go of probably most of his baby clothes has come from my own recent experiences with precious frocks. After Noah was born, I packed up my maternity clothes into a large trash bag and stowed it in the trunk of my car to loan to a friend who was pregnant. That weekend, my husband and stepson went to the transfer station (the dump) in my car and mistook the bag for trash, throwing it into the hopper along with the scraps from the previous night's meal. I looked in my car a few days later and noticed the bag was gone, but assumed Matthew had taken it out of my trunk. I asked him that night, and cried when it became clear what had happened. He was mortified, so I ended up feeling badly for him and moving on quickly to the mindset that it was just clothing. Just clothing. I had that special time, and have pictures of it, and now of course the baby. It's just clothing.

Then this spring when I was cleaning out my closet, I slid my wedding dress out and unzipped the garment bag to take a look. To my horror, I discovered that the bag had stained my dress. I took it to the dry cleaner immediately and their best efforts could not remove the stains, and made the silk dangerously weak in spots. The dress was ruined. I am pursuing a complaint against the store that sold me the garment bag, but am not hopeful this will yield satisfaction. Even if by some miracle I could squeeze some money out of this huge corporation, I couldn't replace the dress. So what could I do? Be sad, but again, tell myself, it's just clothing. Just clothing. I had the wedding, and have the pictures, and the husband. It's just clothing.

Dave Ramsey, author of the book The Total Money Makeover, talks about "stuffitis" and how it can lead to financial woes when we think buying things will make us happier, more peaceful, more satisfied with life, and we end up broke and stressed out instead. I think it also leads to more general emotional and spiritual woe, when objects and stuff start to take the place of actual experiences, moments in time that come and go, and need to be replaced by next moments. While heirlooms seem a different sort of category than perhaps other sorts of things that accumulate uncomfortably, I still think that my wedding dress, and maternity clothes, and Noah's precious newborn onesies can only speak hearsay about those special fleeting times. They don't hold something better than what is inside me or Noah for having lived through those moments so prettily dressed.