Stylist Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet Helps Midlife Women Live that #CapsuleWardrobe Life
Show Snapshot:
Think about your closet for a minute. When you open it, does it spark joy? Or does it cause panic and overwhelm because it’s disorganized and overstuffed (yet you have nothing to wear?). Stylist Dacy Gillespie of Mindful Closet has ideas for cultivating a closet that makes you happy and is more practical, sustainable, and ethical.
We dive into how to be a mindful consumer in a world of excess, building a capsule wardrobe, and dressing for changing midlife bodies. Bonus! We cover how to donate and resell clothes, plus how to deal with seasonal wardrobe changeovers. Hot summer nights - we ready for ya!
In This Episode We Cover:
1. How to build a more mindful closet with the power of a pause.
2. Want to dress to feel your best? Ask yourself how you want to show up in the world.
3. Yes, you can have multiple styles and still create a capsule wardrobe.
4. Overstuffed closet yet nothing to wear? Try the “pie chart” method to build a wardrobe that works for your life.
5. Time to normalize repeating outfits and to ditch the notion of a “timeless wardrobe.”
6. Midlife bodies change. Full stop. How to give yourself permission to get rid of clothes that don’t fit and don’t spark joy.
7. Decision fatigue, closet hacks, how to donate, why to consign, and what to toss.
8. Seasonal wardrobe switcher overs, wardrobe planning, and how to avoid winding up with nine grey sweaters.
Quotable:
The Mindful Closet is about the idea of pausing. It’s really about taking out the impulsivity and the kind of thoughtlessness that sometimes happens when we go shopping. It’s really about taking a pause and really thinking about, “Is this something I need? Is this something I want to wear? Or am I doing this because I’ve been told in certain ways, that this is what I should do?”
If our bodies are evolving and changing, then we can let go of this idea of a wardrobe as being absolutely timeless.Women need permission to let go of those old clothes. Get them out of your closet where they’re making you feel bad that you’re not that size anymore and buy some beautiful new things that make you feel good about where you are.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty [00:21]:
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. When it comes to clothes, are you a pack rat or a purger? Think about your closet for a minute. When you open it, does it spark joy, or does it cause panic or overwhelm because it’s disorganized and overstuffed, yet you have nothing to wear?
Today’s guest has ideas for cultivating a closet and a wardrobe that sparks joy and is more practical, sustainable, and ethical. Dacy Gillespie is a personal stylist and the founder of The Mindful Closet, a weight-inclusive, personal styling service that encourages women to forget about trends and sizing charts and to shop and dress more mindfully and joyfully. If a big closet clean-out is on your to-do list, if you’re looking to shop more ethically but aren’t sure how to begin, or if you simply need help elevating your style after two years of Zoom tops, stick around, this show is for you. Welcome, Dacy.
Dacy Gillespie [1:21]:
Thanks for much for having me, Katie.
Katie [1:22]:
Yeah, I’m excited! I’m a big purger so I’m always looking for ideas and ways to be better, but I want to start by asking you about your business. I noticed that you called it The Mindful Closet, which is a great name. What inspired you to make mindfulness the core of your business?
Dacy [1:41]:
That’s such a good question. It was something that I really put a lot of thought and effort into. And this is just kind of a funny aside, but I remember I was tossing around a bunch of names and kind of running them by some friends and [laughs] one friend said, “Oh no, mindful closet I can hear that on an NPR interview. Like, ‘Dacy, from Mindful Closet.’” I was like, okay, NPR approved, right?
Katie [2:00]:
I love it! Yeah, you manifested it. This is not NPR, but I did invite you because I was like, “The Mindful Closet? I need to know more.”
Dacy [2:10]:
Yeah, so it really is about this idea of pausing. It’s really about taking out the impulsivity and the kind of thoughtlessness that sometimes happens when we go shopping. And there’s so many reasons for that, and those are all things that I work on with clients, but it’s really about taking a pause and really thinking about, is this something I need? Is this something I want to wear? Or am I doing this because I’ve been told, you know, in certain ways, that this is what I should do?
Katie [2:42]:
And so, what are those ways? Is it fashion, the seasons changing? Is it pop culture? Where are we getting these messages that make us feel like we need to keep buying new things?
Dacy [2:52]:
Well, pretty much anywhere. Unfortunately, it’s kind of the water that we’re swimming in these days. But there’s so many messages from the consumerist messages to the negative body messages that we’re getting all the time, and unfortunately a lot of them start young. When I talk with my clients, we go all the way back to childhood and we’ll kind of acknowledge, accept, and try and let go of some of those messages that were given to people by their mothers, or their grandmothers, or their sisters. So, unfortunately women are doing it to other women quite a bit.
And then of course, as we grow up, in the media, in culture, in everything we see and imagery, we’re given these messages specifically that there’s one standard beauty ideal and that we have to spend as much time and effort as we can, attempting to get as close as possible to that ideal. What I find is that a lot of people are doing things that they don’t want to be doing, wearing things they don’t want to be wearing, because of those kinds of messages, that this is how you become someone who is worthy, is by fitting as closely as you can to this ideal.
Katie [4:03]:
So, when I was on your website... Which by the way is so well-organized; I love the different blog posts that you’ve done, or you have a way of organizing where you say, “Start here” and you click on that link, and it starts you at the beginning of this process. So, it’s a terrific website, I encourage people to go look at it after this show. But one of the things that caught my eye on your site is that you say, “It’s not about the clothes, it’s about showing up in the world the way you want to show up.” Which I love. I love this notion of being thoughtful about how we want to present ourselves and how we want to show up in the world. If a client is struggling to decide, how do you help them hone their vision of how they want to put themselves forth to the world?
Dacy [4:50]:
Yeah. Well, my whole goal is to help women uncover, again, how they truly feel best. And that is, you know, perhaps not the same advice that they might get from a magazine, or a book, or someone telling them how to “dress their fruit body type.” So, what I’m really interested in is peeling back all the layers to figure out what women really feel good in and what they really love. And there are quite a few steps to that process. Again, one is thinking back over your life, I call this style stories; thinking back over your life, thinking about the ways that you dressed at various points in your life, trying to identify whether there were some joyful periods in there and what made them so.
And then we do a lot of work with images and visuals. Even that requires some letting go of previous ideas and because a lot of times when we’re told to collect images for style inspiration, we censor ourselves. This could sound like saying, "I love how this looks. That is so cute on her, but I could never pull that off.” Or “I could never wear that, that wouldn’t look good on me, I have nowhere to go in that.” All these messages that we’re even saying to ourselves. So, with my clients, we really want to isolate, you know, their personal opinion and their gut reaction to these images and create a collection of images that feel good to them. I’m always talking about vibes and just how this feels and very interestingly, often, those images will come out of a different place than what people have previously thought their style might be. So, I always recommend starting with visual inspiration.
Katie [6:46]:
That makes sense. So, is there room for multiple visions? I think about work Katie, and casual Katie, and Katie who might be going to a special event. You do a lot of work to edit closets and to discourage or move women away from mindless consumption, but what if we have multiple ways we need to show up in the world? How does that work with an edited closet?
Dacy [7:10]:
I love that question, I’m so glad you asked it. Because again, one of the boxes we often put ourselves in sometimes is, I must stick with one specific style my whole life and never deviate. And that’s absolutely not true either, we’re all changing, and growing, and evolving all the time. So, I absolutely think there’s going to be different styles for different occasions in your life. Another exercise we often do is, let’s take a pie chart and let’s break it down and see which pieces of the pie are the activities in your life that take up the most time and then let’s make sure that that part of your wardrobe corresponds, in terms of ratio here. We don’t want to have 50% of your closet, cocktail dresses if 90% of your time you’re a stay-at-home mom of a 2-year-old. So, just kind of lining those things up and absolutely accepting that there can be different styles for different areas of your life makes absolutely perfect sense.
Katie [8:08]:
Okay, I’m so glad. Because sometimes I feel like a fashion magpie, I’m like literally all over the place. And I’m not one of those people that just shows up and they have that distinct style where you’re like, "That’s so Katie.” Always the black teller pants with a smart white blouse, whatever it is that is someone’s uniform. I really feel like I’m all over the map. So, I’m happy to hear that that’s okay. This notion of a pie chart is so, so smart; to make sure that what’s hanging in your closet aligns with how you spend your time.
You also talk about normalizing repeating outfits and why this is important. Can you walk us through why this is not the norm and why this is so hard to do in practice?
Dacy [8:51]:
Yeah, it’s incredible. I talk to people all of the time... Someone challenged me on this recently and said, "I can’t imagine anyone cares about that.” And I was like, no, I talk to women all the time who have tracked their outfits from high school, keeping track of things so that they would never wear things twice in two weeks, or making sure they look at their social media feed to make sure they’re not wearing the same outfit they wore to a previous event that was photographed. It really is something that’s pretty pervasive. It’s this idea that we should never be wearing the same thing, we should always be wearing something new and different.
That really was a shift, sometime in the mid-late 20th century, when the production of clothing started to get more globalized and exported and imported and we had more access to cheaper clothes, then it became something where we could amass more options. If you think about it previous to that, you think about someone in 1920, even a wealthy person had three or four dresses, fancy dresses. And now, we’re just inundated with this message that we have to have something new for every occasion.
Katie [10:13]:
Absolutely. I really think Instagram has had a big role in that too because this notion of the visual communications and not wanting to be photographed twice... It’s really... We’re getting dressed in a historical period of time that we live in, and you just suggested that in the 1800s or early 19th century, clothes were expensive. You had three special dresses and you obviously re-wore them all season and now Instagram season is about two weeks or so. So, there’s definitely an impact.
We are going to head into a break in just a minute Dacy, but when we come back, I want to talk about what happens when your body size changes, when your weight fluctuates, and you do actually need new clothes that fit, and how one handles that with an edited closet. We’ll be back after this quick break.
[Ad break]
Katie [12:25]:
Dacy, we took a quick break and when we headed into it, we talked about how you manage a wardrobe when your weight is fluctuating. You have a prompt on your website that says, “Is your closet for you or your past self?” What happens to clients whose body size is changing due to things like perhaps pregnancy, illness, or midlife?
Dacy [12:47]:
Yeah, well I think it’s important to acknowledge up front that it’s the norm for all female bodies to change over the course of our lives. It’s actually very abnormal for somebody’s body to stay the same their whole life. I’ve seen it a couple of times, but 99% of women’s bodies are going to change as they age and it’s a biological function. It’s hormones, it’s fat that’s needed to create new life, it’s... I don’t know the science [laughs] but there are all sorts of biological reasons for that, and we really haven’t normalized that. That is really still seen as abnormal and the message we’re given is that no matter what, if your body changes you should attempt to force it back to what it was at some ideal age. Like, if you were 25, if that was your ideal body, you’ve got to try all your life to be getting back to that. And I’m just ready to give up that effort. That’s a tall order and it takes a lot of time and energy that we all, I’m sure, have more important things for. So, it is important to be able to acknowledge that that’s a normal thing and if it is a normal thing then we know we’re going to be buying new things over the course of our lives.
And so, as we talked earlier about style constantly evolving and changing, if our bodies are evolving and changing, then we can let go of this idea of a wardrobe as being absolutely timeless. I know that’s a super popular idea and especially with capsule wardrobes and stuff, which I have a lot of experience with, and we can talk about, but the idea of a wardrobe never changing is just not realistic. I think a lot of women need permission to let go of those old clothes. Get them out of your closet where they’re making you feel bad that you’re not that size anymore and buy some beautiful new things that make you feel good about where you are.
Katie [14:39]:
Such great advice. If we are taking those items out of our closet that no longer serve us, how are we getting rid of them? Do you recommend consigning? Donating? What’s your strategy?
Dacy [14:51]:
Yeah. I have lots of different potential methods, but I do want to say that if it’s hard for you if the editing is hard, get rid of things in the easiest way possible. I again, just, first of all, want to give people that permission. A lot of us are perfectionists and we want to give things away in the perfect way and that can stop a lot of people.
Katie [15:16]:
Dacy, you have seen into my soul.
Dacy [15:20]:
Yeah, [laughs] it can stop people.
Katie [15:21]:
I have bags of stuff that I’m waiting to donate correctly in my home. Help me! Help me, please!
Dacy [15:27]:
Yeah! So, I really think if that’s you, give yourself permission to take it to the easiest possible place and I promise you it will go to a good home. For me, often, I have two little kids, I have a business, we’re all busy, but for me it’s the local Goodwill. And I will actually see my clothes on the racks there later on, I know that they’re getting reused there. If you have beautiful clothes that may have some value, absolutely do consignment or TheRealReal. And if you are able and have the energy, almost in every city there are domestic shelters for women that need clothes, there’s the organization, Dress For Success that always needs professional clothes for women coming out of poverty.
So, there are lots and lots of great things to do, but I also want to give people permission to just give themselves that brain space. This is a really important thing I think, is that we all want to do good in the world, but it’s these little things that are kind of just hanging up all of our energy and pulling all our energy away. I really feel that if we can move that stuff out, we’re going to have this energy come in for other good things we want to do in the world.
Katie [16:42]:
Yes. I sometimes joke that The Container Store is like a large... it’s Valium basically, it’s like Xanax for managing all your stuff. If we had less stuff, we wouldn’t need to go into The Container Store and by 19 different receptacles. But it’s hard. Particularly, you said you have two young children, I have three kids and they range now from 21, 19, and 14. But kids grow, so there was a constant need to recycle through clothing because they were sizing out of them and if my two boys were born during different seasons, they were never going to fit into the same things at the appropriate time. So, there’s this constant maintenance, it’s exhausting, it’s challenging. Making decisions about whether to keep something or donate it, or if it has value, really does take a lot of energy.
Dacy [17:35]:
Mhm, it does. That decision fatigue is huge, I’m so glad you brought that up. That applies to so many things with our closets for sure.
Katie [17:43]:
But where do you land, in terms of decision fatigue, I feel a little on the fence about things like fast fashion? I’m curious to hear your take on this. Sometimes I want something, particularly in the summer, the spring, when I want a pretty white top that I know is not going to look the same at the end of it, I like to buy it like a Zara. Or I’m wearing a white eyelet blouse that I got at Target. It was very inexpensive and I’m so happy about it. Where do you land on fast fashion in terms of...on the range of ethical consumption?
Dacy [18:16]:
Yeah. I mean, it’s a huge, huge question and a huge issue. I have a few basic foundations that I stick to when I’m thinking about this question. One is the idea that for me and my clients, always the priority is to have clothes that fit. So, if you are not buying clothes because you’re worried about buying things perfectly ethically and you’re therefore wearing clothes that are too small and making you feel bad about yourself, my priority in that scenario is that you buy clothes that fit wherever you can find them.
And then my other thing that I really try and remember and remind people of is that the more you wear something, the more ethical of a purchase it is. You could buy a $500 ethically made dress and never wear it and that would be absolutely not honoring the work that went into that dress. And you could buy a $20 Target dress and wear it to pieces and that would actually be honoring the people who made that dress. When fast fashion is... look, it’s a horrible industry, everyone knows so much stuff is wrong with it, but what I really also want to remind people is these corporations are responsible for a lot of these problems and we have to remember the responsibility is being filtered down to us as individuals and if it’s going to be harmful to our mental health to not have clothes that fit, or just for whatever if we’re in a new phase of life... We have to take care of ourselves first and we want to hold those companies to a little bit more of an ethical standard.
Katie [19:52]:
Excellent advice, excellent advice. What are some of the ethical fashion brands that you might want to put on our radar that you think not enough people know about?
Dacy [20:02]:
Oh my goodness, this is such a great question. And there are so, so many, I don’t know that I could even... I’ll just name a few that come right to mind.
Katie [20:10]:
Great, yeah!
Dacy [20:11]:
One is out of Minnesota called Hackwith Design House, I really love that one for one particular reason; because they have a good return policy. And with my clients, I’m always looking for places that are ethically made and have a generous return policy. I know that’s hard for small businesses, but we want to be able to try on the clothes. Universal Standard is another great, really size-inclusive, ethically made company with some great policies. They have a couple of items in their core collection that if your size changes, they’ll just replace it for you for free. My favorite has always been Elizabeth Suzann, who had to shut down during the pandemic but she’s back again in kind of a smaller iteration. There’s also a company in LA called The Tiny Closet, I love her stuff as well, her name is Natalie. So, just so many. I could go on and on.
Katie [21:02]:
Fabulous. I will find all those and put them into the show notes. For listeners who want to find those brands that Dacy just mentioned, you can head to acertainagepod.com to find the transcript of this show so you can shop those collections.
You used the word core collection. I love the fact that that brand helps you replace it. What should be in a core collection? This may be a difficult question to answer but walk us through what you think might be a jumping-off point for those of us who want to take some of the thinking out of this process and have a capsule wardrobe to tap into as a building block.
Dacy [21:36]:
Yeah, I mean it is a tricky question because I really... I mean to many people’s chagrins, I try to stay away from as many rules as possible. [laughs] So, I’m never going to say, "These are the ten things you must have in your closet” because your lifestyle could be completely different from who Tim Gunn was thinking of when he made that list, or whatever. So, I would recommend people look at their wardrobes and see what they actually wear. What do you wear over and over? Is it jeans? Is it leggings? Is it long cardigans? What are the pieces that make up your core collection, so to speak? And then make sure you’ve got enough options of those. And don’t judge yourself, if you do wear leggings every day and that does work for your lifestyle, go ahead. There should be no shaming in what we’re wearing, especially if we’ve thought about it mindfully and know that it works for us.
Katie [22:30]:
That makes sense. Do you believe in hacks? I’ve heard of the hanger hack, where you turn all your hangers one way and then you wait until the end of the season and see which have not been turned back. Do you know what I mean? You’ve worn it and then you’re able to take a quick visual look and say, gosh that hanger wasn’t touched at all this season, time to donate. Do you believe in that type of hacking your wardrobe?
Dacy [22:53]:
Yeah, I think anything like that can be completely helpful. Definitely, if that works for you, it’s a great exercise to do. I also think a great exercise to do is actually create a capsule wardrobe out of your closet, out of what you already own. A lot of times people think a capsule wardrobe means you’re going out and buying everything new, you’re creating this capsule by buying each piece. And what I like to do is kind of reverse that process and say, let’s pull out of your closet what you’re already wearing and let’s call that a capsule, and let’s store the rest of it. You could kind of see after you work with your capsule for a couple of months, how much of that stuff that you stored did you actually miss? How much did you find you needed? I think both of those exercises are really illuminating to help you figure out... Again, it’s about what we actually wear and actually want to wear. The stuff, the kind of either aspirational stuff, or the stuff for a past self, that stuff can maybe be edited out.
Katie [23:49]:
You used the word “store” and I’m going to say that I grew up in New York City and I’m one of four kids. I’m the oldest of four children, and my youngest brother spent the first two years of his life living in a closet because they were able to squeeze a crib in there. When you said the word "store"--I’ve got listeners from all over the country--if you have a home, you might have more space. For those listeners who are like, "I don’t have a closet where I can store this stuff,"-- what are your recommendations for just managing your clothing? Do you have any tips or hacks?
Dacy [24:24]:
Sure. Yeah, I mean I would say that if you want to do some sort of exercise where you’re working with more of a minimal number of items, it’s really just a visual thing. So, clearly, wherever you have your clothes currently stored, that’s where they will fit. But can you visually eliminate some of them? So, one thing that I do, I live in a small... I’m not comparing my house to a New York apartment, I’ve lived in New York, I get it. But I have a smaller ranch house, a mid-century ranch house and in my closet, I have a hanging garment bag that’s kind of wider, it’s kind of like its own zippered container. So, for me, that’s where I store a lot of the stuff. It really is just a visual that allows me... Again, with decision fatigue, what’s hard is taking in all the options. That is what makes your brain work so hard. So, if you can eliminate, visually eliminate as many options as possible, it’ll be just a lot easier. So, anything you can do like that, if you can throw a sheet over the stuff in your closet, somehow isolate it, isolate the stuff that you are wearing, that’s a good start.
Katie [25:34]:
Yeah, that’s a great idea. Just sort of separate stuff out. Because I do find myself reaching for the same things over, and over, and over again. And you wish you had two of them because they’re your heroes, they’re the wardrobe heroes that you reach for and there’s the stuff that you never get rid of. I live in the northeast. Dacy, where do you live?
Dacy [25:55]:
I’m in the Midwest.
Katie [25:56]:
You’re in the Midwest, so you have seasons as well.
Dacy [25:58]:
Lots of seasons.
Katie [25:59]:
We have seasons in New York, we’ve got seasons in the Midwest, summer is upon us. How do you recommend we handle the seasonal changeover in a way that doesn’t overwhelm us, that allows us to feel that we’re edited and in control?
Dacy [26:17]:
You know that’s a good question and over the years what I have come to do is more of a gradual switchover rather than a one-time kind of like, “Right now, I’m switching.” Because I mean, global warming, whatever is happening, our weather is so erratic. We had 100 degrees last week and this week it’s 50. So, for me it’s been really thinking about, this is my spring transitional wardrobe and then I’m going to save the stuff that’s the height of summer. I’m not taking out my spaghetti strap sundresses yet, those are going to be for when it gets to be 100 every day. For two reasons, one is, that I don’t want to think about it now because I’m not going to be wearing it now, and the other is it makes it feel a little fresher when it does come out.
So, for me in the spring, I put away my heaviest sweaters, but I leave some out. I bring out a few of the spring things, but not all the summer stuff. And then when I get to summer in July, I’ll probably switch everything out so it’s completely all summer. And then I’ll do a little reverse process in the fall.
Katie [27:20]:
I love this hybrid notion; I think that’s really smart. That’s a great technique. I want to ask you about the high priestess of closet cleaning, Marie Kondo, who has a lot of opinions about how we should organize stuff. She has famously said that if an item doesn’t spark joy, it needs to be moved out and moved on. And I have a lot of things in my home that don’t spark joy, but I need to keep them because they actually make my home run. So, I’m not 100% on board with this spark-joy approach.
But what I do agree, is this sort of notion of keeping your wardrobe mostly in sight, because I have found that when I store stuff away and change over that sometimes I’ve bought something I already owned because I’ve forgotten I own it. Where do you land on the Marie Kondo approach? I know we’re talking about creating an edited closet, but do you believe that that’s the right approach? Tell me what your thinking is.
Dacy [28:21]:
Yeah, well, first of all, I absolutely love Marie Kondo, I think so many of her theories and philosophies are really excellent but there are a lot of things that aren’t so practical either. I don’t fold my socks the way she does, [both laugh] I don’t fold my t-shirts the way she does.
Katie [28:38]:
I don’t fold my socks at all, there’s no sock folding. [laughs] I don’t have time for that!
Dacy [28:40]:
No, I know. And apparently, my socks are sad about it. You know, they’ll be okay, they’ll be okay. As far as keeping everything out, again, I feel that that is just too visually overwhelming. In terms of making sure that you don’t repeat buy things, I think there are a couple of approaches. One is to make sure that you just kind of have a small enough wardrobe that you’re pretty aware of everything that you have. So, if you can edit things down so that you have a good awareness of it, that’s great. The other thing is to actually, and this is something we do in my group program, you actually take an inventory of your closet, so you know, “I already have three button-down white shirts, I certainly don’t need another one. Or if I do, one has to take off.” So, those are a couple of ways to think about it. I don’t like having everything out, I just think it’s too overwhelming.
Katie [29:38]:
That one-in-one-out philosophy is a very smart approach. We’re going to be moving into a speed round in a minute, but I do want to just touch on this notion of inventory-ing what you have because I think that’s a good decision-making tool. Walk us through what an inventory would look like and how we would put it into practice. Obviously, we could do your group coaching if we were to do it on our own, what does that look like?
Dacy [29:59]:
Sure, I mean it’s very simply categorizing all of your items and then counting them. So, the categorization can actually take a little time to get started but you might say... For everyone, again, they’re going to have different categories. For instance, for myself, in the winter the categories are thick sweaters, cardigans, long sleeve shirts. That might be the categories I have for tops and then I’m counting all of those things. So, if I do that before I go into that season, for instance, if I do this in the fall – and I actually have a link to some downloads that I can send that would be helpful for people – if you can look at that going into fall and know already how many sweaters you have, you’re going to be much more mindful about your fall shopping. Because we all get excited right, we’re like, “Ooo, new fall stuff is out, I love that sweater, I need that sweater.” And then we unpack our fall stuff and we’re like, " Oh crap, I forgot I already had nine sweaters.”
Katie [30:59]:
Right, I have nine gray sweaters. [laughs]
Dacy [31:01]:
Right, exactly. I have a fall wardrobe planning worksheet which I’ll make sure and get to you so people can have that. That really takes you through that process before you make your shopping list.
Katie [31:16]:
Fabulous. I’m putting that into the show notes. So, people can head to acertainagepod.com to look for those.
All right, Dacy let’s move into our speed round. These are just quick one- to two-word answers so we can cover more ground and give people a taste of your work before we wrap. Are you ready?
Dacy [31:34]:
I am ready and I’m hoping my COVID brain doesn’t let me down. I’ll be quick.
Katie [31:38]:
You’ve got this, you’ve got this. We’re not going to tax you too much. Founding Mindful Closet was _____.
Dacy [31:47]:
Intimidating.
Katie [31:48]:
Intimidating. Okay, we’re here for honest answers. Items in our closet that are still wearing tags; do we donate, resell, or hang onto?
Dacy [31:57]:
Resell or donate.
Katie [31:59]:
Favorite place to consign clothes _____.
Dacy [32:03]:
I have a couple of local places here in St. Louis that I love. Byrd Designer Consignment is my favorite.
Katie [32:08]:
Okay, so look local. Everyone who is listening should google their local spots.
Dacy [32:12]:
That’s right.
Katie [32:13]:
Best hack for getting rid of items that no longer have resale value or are too old to donate _____.
Dacy [32:20]:
If you mark them as fabric recycling and take them to Goodwill, Goodwill will recycle them, like fabric.
Katie [32:27]:
That is a great hack. Never pay full price for this wardrobe basic _____.
Dacy [32:33]:
I believe you should pay full price for anything that you need and love.
Katie [32:37]:
Okay. So, you’ve already answered my next question which is, wardrobe item worth a splurge _____. Or what do you splurge on?
Dacy [32:43]:
What do I splurge on? I splurge... Definitely, shoes are always something worth spending on. And I probably splurge on jewelry. And not fine jewelry necessarily, but just cool necklaces and earrings are something I love.
Katie [32:58]:
Just stuff you love, I love it. Okay, favorite closet organizing tool _____.
Dacy [33:03]:
Let’s say that inventory, I think that’s a great one.
Katie [33:05]:
Great. This clothing item always makes me feel like myself _____.
Dacy [33:11]:
Mmm, a linen tunic. [laughs]
Katie [33:13]:
Nice. Nope, nope, can’t do it. This popular wardrobe staple is not in my closet _____.
Dacy [33:19]:
Bodycon dress.
Katie [33:20]:
Okay, surprise, even stylists struggle. What’s a wardrobe challenge you grapple with?
Dacy [33:28]:
Dealing with my changing body.
Katie [33:30]:
Got it, yes, that’s something that everyone does. Dacy, this has been terrific. But your one-word answer to complete this sentence before I wrap: As I age, I feel _____.
Dacy [33:40]:
Like I just care less.
Katie [33:41]:
[laughs] That is the perfect note to end on. Thank you, Dacy. Before we say goodbye, how can our listeners find you, your work, and Mindful Closet?
Dacy [33:52]:
Sure, my website is mindfulcloset.com, I’d love it if people head there and get some extra resources and then I also love to hang out on Instagram @mindfulcloset.
Katie [34:02]:
Thank you, Dacy. This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. Join me next Monday when I talk with Julie Kasinski, a co-founder of the buzzy supplements brand, Wile Women, which offers products for women navigating their hormonal rollercoaster of peri and menopause and which just landed on the shelves of Whole Foods.
Before we say goodbye, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to write a review of the show on Apple Podcasts. I see and appreciate you. If you have not yet done so, make today the day! It’s so easy to do. Just find A Certain Age on your podcast app, scroll down to the bottom, and tap on the stars to rate, or leave a written review.
Special thanks to Michael Mancini, who composed and produced our theme music. See you next time and until then: age boldly, beauties.