Thursday, May 20, 2010
Scenes From Turning 50 : The 34's
Kari and I are cleaning out closets, attic and garage in preparation for selling our house later this summer. Decluttering our life is an arduous, sometimes painful but ultimately satisfying process. The timing of the project happens to coincide with my 50th birthday, so there is some emotional overlap between the cleanup project and a more general urge to take stock of my life at this milestone.
Decluttering involves reversing decisions made years ago not to throw things away. Kari is less sentimental than me, has no problem throwing things away, and therefore has much less old crap to sort through. I have tons of memorabilia (i.e., crap) that didn't get tossed when it should have. These things have followed me through many moves, slowly growing to fill available storage space each time I move.
I've seen reality TV shows where people with much more alarming packrat issues than me are coached through cleaning up, throwing away and letting go of their huge messes. Seeing others go through this has helped me get a handle on my own emotional ties to old crap. The most helpful advice is the 6-month rule: "If you haven't touched it in 6 months, you don't need it." There are exceptions to that rule, like old photos, but in general it's a good rule. In my case, I can extend it to 6 YEARS and still get rid of 90% of what's in our closets and attic.
Last week though, I hit a 6-year-rule conundrum. What to do with my 34-waist jeans and shorts?
In 2004 Kari and I went on the South Beach diet. We both did very well on it. I eventually lost 70 pounds over the course of that year. When we started I was on the verge of needing 42-waist pants. That was my motivation for the diet -- I couldn't bring myself to buy 42's. By the end of the year I was at my "ideal" weight and had a nice new set of 34-waist jeans and shorts. I hadn't worn 34's since college.
I kept most of the weight off for another year or so, when I found I needed to pull the 36-waist jeans back out of the bottom drawer. I've been on a gradual climb ever since, finally reaching my 2004 pre-diet weight this year.
I'm back in the gym these days, and back on the bike. I'm trying to get a handle on my eating habits once again. But turning 50, knowing myself and knowing what happened every time I've lost weight in the past, I have to wonder if I'm ever going to get back into those 34's. I haven't touched them in 5 years or so, so by my decluttering rules they need to go. But I felt so good when I could fit into them...
