How Many Shoes & Purses Does One Girl Need?

Accessories are important to a girl.  After all we need something to draw attention to our perceived flaws.  Nothing can update a wardrobe faster than a few new accessories.  We are taught this at a very young age.  What little girl didn’t get dressed up in a new dress without ruffled socks and new shoes?  Sometimes at Easter we also got a new spring hat too.   Even we tom-boys had a dress in the closet someplace.  Momma always made sure everything coordinated for church on Sunday and the knots were combed out of our hair and all the dirt was cleaned from under our fingernails.

Then we get a bit older and 5^th grade comes and so does blue eye shadow and lip gloss… 7^th grade comes and now it is ALL about fashion.  Yep, we girls do pretty well until 7^th grade then our self-esteem is suddenly messed up forever.  Some girl always has prettier hair, prettier skin, is skinnier and better dressed… several girls who fit that description gather together into a clique and suddenly we find we don’t fit at all.  This is when we feel the need to have (heaven forbid) brand named clothes.  After all, ALL the pretty girls have them… it goes to reason that if we have brand named clothes we can be a pretty girl too.  Thus begins our own personal obsession to look just right ALL of the time.

We have already ditched the blue eye shadow and moved on to more natural or glamorous makeup and our  application techniques are improving daily.  The tom-boy is now fashion conscious and beginning to see why Mom was so strict and firm about keeping our patent leather Mary Jane’s out of the mud puddle and our clothes clean… after all, “ladies” don’t do that…   We find ourselves buying teenage girly magazines.  We have to know what is hot and what is not for ourselves now.  We are getting a little old for Mom to pick out ALL of our clothes.

As we learn this new ‘fashion’ stuff for ourselves, we start by copying what those pretty girls do… it takes time to find our own style, we are more comfortable copying the pretty girls than being ourselves.  Most of us wonder who “ourselves” are anyway.  So in the meantime we copy what the pretty girls do and what the fashion magazines tell us we should and shouldn’t wear and how we should look doing it.  The magazines tell us what shoes and other accessories are in style… and so it begins.

We begin to acquire said “stylish” clothing and accessories… One pair of jeans, one pair of earrings, one pair of shoes, and one purse is only the beginning.  We are hooked.  We begin “collecting”, but since fashion is ever evolving we never stop.  We are hooked just like a drug addict except a new pair of shoes gives us the ultimate high…

By the time we graduate we have quite a growing collection of shoes.  We could easily fill a storage tote with them.  After school we find ourselves needing at least one good purse to carry all of the “stuff” we didn’t need in high school and is now essential to keep with us as a ‘grown up’.   The problem with this however is just one purse isn’t enough.  We need different sizes depending on where we are going and what we need to carry, AND we find ourselves needing a purse to match one outfit or another, one pair of shoes or another… and with each season styles continue to change so we must acquire more of the said baggage just to keep up.  Just when we believe we don’t need anything else and our wardrobe is complete something new catches our eye…

For me, it took literally years before I realized I could (if I had to) get by with a good black purse and although it might not be the newest each season it was dependable and I could drag all my stuff around in it from season to season… But where’s the fun in that?  Where is the little boost we get from a new purse or pair of shoes?  Let’s face it… we need at the very least 4 of said black bags (and shoes to match).  A ‘dressy’ bag, an everyday bag, a small one when we need to travel light, and the great big one that we can carry everything we own in.  No wardrobe is ‘complete’ without such basics.  But… black can get boring...  

Between Easter and Labor Day white is acceptable and highly desirable.  But, white gets dirty so easily… Summer can call for a splash of color too, and of course sandals… not just one pair either.  We need some dressy ones for church and special occasions.  Some casual ones and of course we must have at least one pair of flip flops or their equivalent.  And then… the seasons change again and sandals just aren’t “practical”.  When winter comes we need at least two pair of boots.  One casual and one on the more dressy side.  It never ends.

We find ourselves trying to be satisfied with the collection we have acquired over the years, but fashions change and so does the amount of cargo we must carry in our bags.  Styles continue to evolve and heaven forbid we neglect the second pair of shoes at the” Buy One, Get One 50% Off” sales!  Who can pass up a bargain like that?

At some point we realize that our shoes and bags are taking over our closet and we see we only have four options.  1.) We can find a better way to organize our prized collection.  2.) We can store some away and rotate them with the change of seasons.  3.) We can part with a few (only a few) of them.  We give them away, donate them, consign them and even put them in yard sales, and 4.)  We can move to a better dwelling with more closet space.

I just LOVE stumbling upon a box full of purses at a yard sale!  Designer purses under $5.00!  Some as cheap as $1.00… who can resist?  And just as good… finding shoes in my size too!  Yard sales and clearance sales… how can a girl resist?  We can’t.

Our husbands will question us with the famous words: “How many shoes/purses do you need?”  And time and time again we say we are done and have enough, while secretly we know… 

We need just one more.