Blogging from A to Z: U is for Uniform

During the month of April last year, I participated in the A to Z Blogging Challenge - one alphabet-themed post per day (except Sundays).  I had such a good time with it that I'm doing it again this year.  I'm loosely organized on the theme of downsizing, minimalism, and small-home living that I've learned in 14 years of living on a small boat.  I'm starting with A is for Anchoring Out, Anger-ing Out, and ending with Z is for Zout and Zwarte Peper (Dutch for salt and black pepper). Click on the A to Z logo on the lower left sidebar for links to many other bloggers participating in the challenge.

What do you think about wearing the same uniform every day? (Photo, US Naval Academy)

When I was in (public) elementary school, several of my friends were in Catholic school, and they had to wear uniforms to school every day. I thought it was weird. Still do, in fact. Being a kid or adolescent is a great time to learn to express yourself and differentiate yourself, and doing so by your fashion statements is one way. My friends all wore those dark pants/skirts and white shirts/blouses with the school's crest, and were distinguishable only by their hair color or styles, while I loved plaids and stripes, magenta, blue-green, and sapphire. Together. I distinctly remember my dad telling me that people don't dress like rainbows, before sending me back to my room to change before we went ... somewhere. I no longer remember where, but I still remember joking with him in later years about his sartorial advice.

Kids in school uniforms in India. (Photo by Byronkhyangti, licensed under Wikimedia commons, from here)

Conditions are very different for an older adult than for a school-age child. I experimented for a while in my 30s with a daily work "uniform" of blue jeans and a gray sweatshirt. I enjoyed not having to think at all about what to wear, or spend time and money shopping for it. The lack of focus on clothing was great until I was promoted and required to dress corporate. Yet now, 50+ years later than those school days, when I wear my uniform for work as a tourguide, whether it is historic sailor garb or shirt with ship's logo, I remember how simple mornings could be.  It must be something human that we take something so straightforward and artificially complicate it. I mused about what a waste of energy micro-decisions such as choosing clothing are, as part of last year's A to Z challenge. Now, I'm somewhere in between mindlessly wearing the same thing every day, and having fun with my clothing and "dressing like a rainbow."

I'm getting ready to sail on the Galeon again, and using my experience last year, as well as my experiment two years ago of dressing with 33 items for 3 months, to make my packing list. I'm not limited to 33 items this go-around but simply limited by space (I found that last time I did the clothing challenge too -- on the boat, volume matters more than number of pieces; 33 wool sweaters take up a ton more space than 33 swimsuits! For this summer cities tour I will have about as much clothing space as I do aboard our sailboat -- about the equivalent of two airline carryon bags. Making it more challenging is the additional constraint that we need to be prepared for hot summer weather as well as night watches in chilly Canadian waters. On the other hand, it's night watch, so no one cares about -- or can even see -- whether what I'm wearing matches!

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If you're really curious, here's my packing list:

warm jacket: navy blue with ship's logo
fleece sweatshirt: dark teal
sweater: gray wool
foul-weather rain jacket and pants
5 t-shirts with ship's logo (3 navy blue, 2 white)
4 shorts: khaki, black, blue, gray
2 stretch jeans: khaki
2 summer weight pants: khaki, off-white
3 t-shirts for off-duty: 2 short-sleeve & 1 long-sleeve
orange Hawaiian shirt (fun for BBQ nights aboard)
2 cute tops for exploring in town: pink/black/white/tan geometric print, and abstract blue rainbow criss-cross neck
nice black semi-dressy pants
long-sleeve silver sunblock shirt
2 warm turtlenecks: dark gray, light blue
Keens (closed-toe water sports shoes)
tennis shoes (black, so they can fade into the background to wear with the black pants)
flip-flops
wool hat, gloves, scarf, fleece long underwear
Tilley hat for sun
scrimshaw "ship's anchor" earrings with pink, blue, and diamond studs
backpack
purse
swimsuit
one raggy outfit for painting in
oversize t-shirt and shorts for sleeping

other stuff:

prescription sunglasses

head lamp

energy bars

name tag

rigging knife and Leatherman

phone and universal charger for European power

notebook and blank paper

small camera

sleeping bag, sheet, pillow

decaf tea

chapstick

Blogging from A to Z: Micro-Decisions

During April, I'm participating in the Blogging from A to Z challenge -- one alphabet-themed post per day, starting with A is for Aruba Aftermath and ending with Z is for ... I don't know yet what Z is for, I'll figure it out when I get there.

Too many choices, about things that aren't really important, are exhausting. (image from here)

Yesterday, in doing a roundup of my favorite posts from my first couple of years writing Life Afloat, I was reminded about the topic of wasting energy on decisions that ultimately make no difference in the grand scheme of things.  I called these "micro-decisions," and my examples were about too many varieties of mustard, and too many different coffee mugs in the cabinet, are detailed in a post called Plenty.*  Decisions take work and sap mental energy.

Now the concept of saving mental energy by limiting choices seems to be sweeping the Internet. It's the consistent theme of the Project333 clothing challenge, and of course armies have been telling their soldiers exactly what to wear for hundreds of years.  My own experiment with restricting myself to 33 items of clothing for 3 months was fun and insight-producing, but several recent articles have detailed people who have chosen to restrict their sartorial range is even more drastically.  My favorite of these is The Science of Simplicity: Why Successful People Wear the Same Thing Every Day; similar takes on the idea are here and here.  A less successful experiment, by a woman who wore the same outfit every day, serves as a way to fine-tune the uniform thesis.  Instead of a forgettable fade into the background look such as blue jeans and a black tee shirt, her outfit was beautiful, and memorable, which is what led to her problems.  The same would be true of mustard -- if you're only going to have one, make it a pleasant and subtle, not overly dramatic, flavor.  (The same idea -- that if you're only going to have one "x," make it unremarkable so it fits as many situations as possible -- is not, however, true of coffee mugs.  If I'm only going to have one ... I want it to be the biggest and best insulated thing I can wrap my hand around!)

So, this whole idea of living better by having fewer choices about unimportant stuff? It's a natural and mandatory side-effect of living on a boat.  We just don't have the space to make it otherwise!


* "Plenty" was first written for the newspaper April 12, 2010, and copied to this blog as an archive almost a year later when the newspaper changed their web format and old stories would otherwise be lost.  So, hey!  I had the idea first and I can prove it!* (Insert silly face icon here; I'm not really the first to have had this idea.)

33333 (The Project 333 Wardrobe Challenge, on a 33 foot Boat)

Developing a 33-item list

About 17 years ago, before we even owned a boat, much less thought about what kind of radical downsizing it would take to live on one, I met my friend Krysty Anne in an online message board devoted to simplifying your life.  So the two of us have been chatting about redefining your relationship to your possessions, and how mainstream society has evolved in this, for a long time. Even though she is an old hand at this streamlining possessions game, when she pointed me to this minimalist challenge called Project 333 she told me she envisioned that it would be hard: dress with 33 items including clothing, accessories, jewelry, outerwear and shoes, for 3 months.  The website gives you a few exceptions; the 33 items doesn’t include your wedding ring or another sentimental piece of jewelry that you never take off, underwear, sleep wear, in-home lounge wear,  and workout clothing (you can only wear your workout clothing to work out). In her email to me, Krysty Anne said that when she saw the challenge she thought of me immediately, given the space constraints of our boat life.

“Sure thing!”  I thought to myself.  “This is gonna be easy…Krysty Anne is right, this is just my ordinary life, given how tiny my clothing locker is.  And besides, everything I buy I have to be able to hand wash using limited water, and air dry, if we're away from civilization for a while so my selection has always been limited.  I bet if I simply listed what I own, right now, no preparation at all, it wouldn’t be much more than 33 items.  I just don’t have the space for more, haven’t since we moved aboard.  Watch me breeze through this so-called “challenge!”  Let me show you how it’s done.”

So I went into my clothing locker with pencil and paper and started to make a list. I got to 27 shirts alone and my cocky attitude evaporated.   Maybe when we first moved aboard almost 13 years ago,  I had started with only a few carefully coordinated outfits per season, but over time, I’d pick up a t-shirt from a festival or got a scarf as a gift, and pretty soon the locker is crammed to capacity and the 33-item limit is receding in the rear-view mirror.  Maybe this would be a good challenge for me to do, a bit more humbly than I first thought!  It’s apparently time to purge my lockers again, and maybe get some insights.

Sixteen tops, seven pants, and ten shoes, accessories, and other items would bring me to 33 pieces to wear for the summer.  I got my list of 27 shirts and started numbering my favorites in order.  Number one was easy -- a dark teal drapey v-neck; number two was a gray Hawaiian shirt with dancing dolphins, and number three a t-shirt that proudly reads “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”  I continued and when I got to sixteen I looked back over the list, and at what didn’t make the cut.  Hmm, not too bad: I have 3 nice tops, 2 sun-protective long sleeve shirts for sailing, one Hawaiian shirt, and ten tees (three with printed messages or logos from festivals, six plain slim-fitting v-neck ones for every day, and one long sleeve.)  And they are all things that I find fun to wear, or that have sentimental meaning for me, and that I think I look good in.

After I finished with the tops, I started on bottoms.  According to my list I had thirteen pants and shorts in the locker (I never wear skirts) so I had plenty to choose from – or so I thought.  I started ticking off my favorites, as I had done with the tops.  Number one was the great pair of jeans that were a hand-me-down from my BFF Karen, numbers two and three were lightweight gray everyday pants and black dress pants, number four was a cute pair of gray shorts (another Karen hand-me-down, the girl’s got style), number five was … um, um, err… I had written “old” next to the entry for “khaki twill pants;” their hems and pocket edges were frayed.  I’d written “NQR” next to the brown shorts, the black shorts, and the white pants.  NQR: Not Quite Right.  Too baggy in the hips or too tight in the waist or too short, these were more or less placeholders; I needed a pair of white pants in a hurry for some reason, or they were on sale, and though they weren’t perfect they would get me by until I found a better one, but I never bothered to shop for that better-fitting one, and never felt great wearing the one I had.  I had written “H” next to the jeans with the sparkly pockets; H stood for “hanging out at home only, do not be seen in public in these. Yes, they make your butt look fat, LOL.”

Clearly if I only was going to wear seven pairs of pants for the next 3 months I’d like them to be ones I felt good in.  But I only had four that made the cut.  Four! And this was the first advantage I gained from the Project 333 challenge – it had pointed out to me that I was wasting my very limited space on nine pairs of pants that I didn’t like.  I sort of knew something was wrong when it was laundry time.  I would have to do laundry because I had “nothing to wear.”  But the locker wasn’t completely empty, so how could I have “nothing to wear?” I didn't have "nothing to wear" -- I had nothing I wanted to wear.  BIG difference! Now I could quantify it – nine of 13 – almost three quarters – of my pants, were items I didn’t like.  Time for some simplifying, and a shopping trip. If I was going to own fewer pieces, each one was going to work harder, and I could spend more money for each one for the same overall clothing budget.

The last ten items were the easiest: purse, 3 pairs of shoes (yes, those same black and bronze ballet flats I wrote about before made the list), hat, raincoat, sweatshirt, belt, sunglasses, and earrings.

I’ve said before that keeping things all in one colorway was critical for fitting my business wardrobe aboard, so that I only needed one set of shoes-socks-belt-purse accessories (not black and brown and navy blue, for example.)  So I looked over my final choices paying attention to how each worked with everything else in my newly-streamlined clothing locker.  I looked over the collection and got my second startling revelation after learning that I only liked four pairs of my pants.  Six of my shirts were pink! I don’t do pink!  The color looks decent on someone of my ethnicity and skin tone, but there’s just flat out too much cultural baggage for me, child of the sixties, one of only two girls in the advanced math class from my school, and all that.  Pink – how the heck did I end up with so much pink? Chalk it up to another insight from this project.  I feel like I need to apologize and make excuses and explain, give you the backstory on how each of these came into my life just to prove it wasn’t on purpose, that I wasn’t collecting pink: for example, the Washington Cherry Blossom festival shirt is pink because, well, cherry blossoms are pink, so what other color could a festival celebrating them possibly be; and the one with marbleized swirls was a gift from Karen that she said reminded her of an art project we did in our sophomore year in college (she’s right, it does); the “well-behaved women never make history” shirt was only available in that one color, and frankly because of the cultural association of pink wouldn’t have quite as much impact if it were any other color like green or black; and so on.) So there you have it, “it is what it is.” Oh, and when I pick out my 33 items for autumn?  Count on it – I’ll be looking for gray, or orange, or blue, or brown … anything but pink! 

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Details for those also in the Project 333 challenge:

We drove to Annapolis for a two week visit in mid-July, and the overwhelming value of this challenge became apparent, because I didn’t have to think about what to pack. I merely gathered my 33 items and put them in one (small) duffel bag, and I was done.  Perfect!

I gave myself 3 exemptions.  The first was for sailing related items, like my sea boots and sailing gloves; and swimsuits.  Another was for the grungy, its-okay-to-get-paint-on-them clothes I wear around the boatyard or for scrubbing the bilge.  The third was for historical reenactment garb.  Because, really, it’s not like I’m going to wear my sword to the grocery store or sea boots to a restaurant.  Those specialized items just don’t work for everyday street wear!

After about six weeks, I realized that I wasn’t missing my packed-away clothing at all.  Thirty-three items was plenty.  What I was missing was variety in jewelry.  I have a long, narrow face and earrings really liven me up, you’d almost never see me without two in each ear.  I had started the challenge by choosing a pairing that I thought I could wear every day: a small diamond stud above a modern black onyx and silver swirl that I had bought on vacation last winter.  I love the combination, but it was getting old.  To keep things fun, I decided to cut myself a bit more slack than the challenge technically allows, just on the earrings.  Besides, living full time on a 33 foot sailboat is all about storage space, and gemstones just don’t take a lot of space (insert smiley face here).  I had picked one set to wear for the next three months, but so far all that had done was make me grumpy with no real gain in understanding my storage.  I wasn’t going to bring all my jewelry back, however.  I wasn’t abandoning the challenge that much.  So in the spirit of the 333 challenge, and my particular challenge in my space constrained life, I limited myself to what would fit in a single tiny fishing tackle box with six compartments.  I ended up with the diamond studs, pink crystal studs, silver hoops, malachite arcs, scrimshaw anchors, and crazy silver wire squiggles made by silversmith and fellow liveaboard Brenda.   And I noticed that I didn’t choose the onyx and silver swirls that I thought were my favorite at the start of the challenge. I had burned out on them – score one for self-knowledge gained by trying this crazy adventure.

 Sixteen tops.  I can tell you the stories behind many of these, from the one I wore to my father’s funeral that still reminds me of him every time I put it on, to the one my BFF Karen said she bought because it made her think of an art project from our sophomore year in college, but … where did all this pink come from?

Three pairs of pants and one pair of shorts that made the final cut, and a pair of NQR khaki pants that'll do until I get something that fits better, because I needed something to tide me over until the next laundry day (and now I'm inspired to seek a better-fitting pair).  Even with that concession, I'm two pants/shorts under my plan. 

You get an exemption to the 33-item limit for jewelry that you never take off, and this necklace came with a story.  My grandmother had a pair of diamond earrings, and two sons.  As each young man met the woman he wanted to marry, grandma gave him one of the earrings to have reset into an engagement ring; my dad presented his to my mom in 1950.  Some years later, my mom replaced her ring with an eternity band, and had the diamonds from the engagement ring reset yet again into a necklace. I have photos of her as a young mother in a white shirt with this pendant dangling from her neck, posing with baby me.  She passed the necklace on to me, along with its story, in 1995, and I’ve worn it ever since.

I finally cut myself some slack for earrings, but demanded that they all fit in this tiny case.  (The black and silver swirls on the bottom outside the case are the ones I thought I could wear as my "only" ones for the 3 months of the challenge, but I burned out on after 6 weeks.  The silver squares on the upper right were removed so you could see them better, folded, they fit into the empty compartment in the case, )

How Does This Story End?

No, these aren't my new shoes.  But I live a rich fantasy life.

I’ve been in a major funk.  Major enough to make Dan ask, “Is it over?”  (“It” in this context referred to our time of living on the boat, not, thankfully, our marriage.) “Do you want to move ashore?”

Maybe the funk is contagious.  I’ve been thinking recently about the variety of reasons that the cruising/liveaboard dream ends.   Money runs out, health deteriorates, family needs help.  One couple we know ended the liveaboard phase of their lives when their boat proved unseaworthy and started twisting and flexing in a storm.  Another couple moved back to shore after they successfully completed their planned 4-year voyage around the Atlantic.  But for some other friends, nothing concrete, reportable, or dramatic marked the end -- they simply decided that cruising wasn’t being fun any more, and put their boat on the market.  “I miss long hot showers … and toast,” Ean explained in an email to me. "Turning live fish into dead fish makes me a little sick to my stomach. … I don’t even like nature.  You know what they say, ‘you can take the boy out of the city...’ You hear ‘secluded anchorage;’ I hear ‘solitary confinement.’ What WAS I thinking?” 

But I think the thing that put me into a funk was my BFF Karen’s cute new shoes.  We visited her a couple of weeks ago, and I complimented the shoes, and she suggested going to the store where she had just bought them – on sale! And she had a 30% off coupon! And they had them in my size!

The question was not in finding or affording them, but where to put them.  Every liveaboard we’ve ever known has had the issue of limited storage space aboard.  Our total indoor living space is, after all, less than 200 square feet.  Personal possessions are minimal in this lifestyle.  Generally that minimalism has felt freeing.  Sailnet poster “elspru” explains that “being on a travelling sailboat isn't so much about luxury of the body, unless very cozy simple living is your version of bodily luxury, it's more about luxury of the soul and mind, having many different experiences, seeing beautiful scenery, interacting with new people.”  So here were these cool bronze and black ballet flats -- that were right in front of me, that I had in my hand and could easily afford.  But I couldn’t have them -- unless I could find a storage space for them. The situation just awakened my inner girly-girl and she was pissed! Thus my obvious funk.

Remember the old Monty Python skit about “The Royal Society for Putting Things on Top of Other Things?”  That’s what my storage life is like, all the time.  Our galley is a study in organization, nesting pots and pans and bowls, collapsible silicone colanders, and multi-use gadgets.  Two cubic feet holds what would have filled an entire cabinet in our kitchen on land – but it’s impossible to get any one item without moving four more items first.  And the shoe locker we share has room for about six pairs each, no more.  Compared to the space available, it sometimes feels like we have just a bit too much of everything, in every category – too many clothes, too many shoes, too many books, too many tools. (I know, I know, a very “first-world problem” to have, right?) So I either take my best estimate of the most useful item in each category and move the others off the boat – and then get frustrated when I later discover that the one that would meet my needs perfectly, is just the one I got rid of a few weeks ago – or I keep them all and cram them into an already-overstuffed locker and can’t access any of them easily.

Was this going to be the way our liveaboard lives ended?  Not with a bang, but with a whimper?  I always joked that our “exit plan” when we get too old and feeble to live on the boat, is to find or fund an assisted-living marina.  Was I really going to cut it short instead just for storage space for pretty new shoes?  Dan was super supportive through all of this angst (obviously, it was about more than the shoes).  Karen reminded me that every lifestyle, every situation, every decision, includes an element of compromise. (Wise girl, it’s not for nothing she’s my BFF). 

This story doesn’t have a happy ending, or a sad ending, or a funny ending, or really, any ending at all.  Because our life afloat didn't end over this mini-crisis after all. Karen’s right, it is all compromise.  This life afloat isn’t exactly perfect but it’s pretty darn good.  And it’s a balance, because even the best life has some bad days.  I don’t remember exactly what got me out of my funk and got me back on track; there was no specific event.  There’s still gonna be some great days, and some grumpy days.  My funk just began to lift, and then lift further.  We sorted through lockers and organized shelves and donated items to Goodwill and The Clothes Box.  We still store all our things on top of other things.  I can have anything I want; I just can’t have everything I want. (At least, not all at the same time). 

All our galley stuff: neatly stowed

The exact same stuff, no more, no less, spread out. (The nesting pot-and-pan set stows inside the pressure cooker, which is why you don't see it in the first photo.)

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Clothing and Laundry - Afloat

When we first moved aboard in 2002, I knew I had several more years to work as the skipper of a LMD (large mahogany desk) in Washington DC.  Washington was a place known, if not for conservative politics, certainly for conservative clothing styles.  And at home I was going to have one small locker, room for 11 hangers plus 5 shelves about 18 inches wide, to hold all my “stuff” except shoes and underwear.  The new job didn’t faze me, but dressing for it was going to be a challenge!

I’m an engineer, so I seriously overanalyzed my wardrobe in preparation, and made myself some rules.   Some of what I learned was boat-specific, and some could be useful for any downsizer.

I wanted to make sure I had enough outfits to get me through a week or two of work.  Then I wanted to be prepared with clothing for other likely events in my life: something to wear for a fancy evening or New Year’s Eve party; something for “lunch with the girls;” something for a wedding.  It felt more like I was packing for a long trip, than for the next 7 years of my life.  And indeed, when I was done, everything fit into 2 carryon bags.

I selected twice as many tops as bottoms -- who remembers your pants, anyway, or whether you’ve worn the same pair twice in the same week?  I was counting on making a bigger impression with what I said, than with what I wore.  Who knows?  Maybe the constraints of the clothing pushed me to greater professional achievement hoping my comments overshadowed my style!

I embraced high-tech synthetic fabrics.  Almost everything was hand- or machine-washable and didn’t wrinkle.  I had fewer pieces than when we lived on land, therefore could spend a bit more on each.

I picked one colorway, and stuck to it.  That first winter, it was black – white – red, and shades of these including gray, pink, burgundy.  Every top went with at least two pairs of pants, every pair of pants went with at least two tops.  I was the mix and match queen.  By sticking to one range of colors, I only needed one set of accessories – shoes, belts, socks, purses, briefcase – in black/gray; I didn’t also need brown and also need navy blue.  I made it work with four pairs of pants (black, charcoal gray, winter white);  eight or ten tops - sweaters, shirts, blouses, a mix of styles and fabrics, mostly solids but one or two with patterns, again in that same limited range of colors; three blazers; several scarves that took up almost no space but could jazz up a look.  For dressy, I had a pair of slinky bronze pants and an ivory lace shirt, and a black halter top and black skirt that I could put together to make a little black dress, or mix the black halter with the bronze slinky pants, or the white shirt with the black skirt and one of the blazers or a scarf.  Weekends were jeans and t-shirts and turtlenecks and sweatshirts.  Then the shoes: three pair of everyday shoes (can you guess? Black flats in two different styles, gray pumps) one pair of strappy sandals with rhinestones for dressy events, tennis shoes, sea boots and deck shoes and hiking boots.  Summer was the same drill, only in white and tan and a soft green.  The system served me well for the 7 years I continued to work.

My clothing locker.  Honest, it's not staged! But I did want to show that (a) I really do keep everything in just one set of colors; and (b) it really is small!

Fast forward to my retirement date of 9/9/09 – I hung up the phone on my last-ever teleconference and we prepared to head out.  I showed up at Goodwill to donate armloads of business clothing in dark, somber colors.  Now I could wear turquoise, and orange.  Together.


We’d been warned not to bring cotton t-shirts and jeans on our voyage south because cotton held odors, took a lot of water to wash and took forever to dry.  So our cruising wardrobes consisted largely of nylon Hawaiian shirts and quick-dry shorts, along with some SFP-50 sunblock long-sleeve shirts and long, lightweight pants.  Also along for the trip were one nice outfit for going out and another for looking respectful when meeting customs agents, a complete set of polar fleece long underwear, tencel underwear, and several swimsuits each.  Everything could be hand-washed in a sink using very little water, and hung dry.  We had no washing machine on board, so for towels and sheets we pretty much needed a laundromat.  Where we could, we supported the entrepreneurial spirit of one of the local people who were only too glad to wash and fold our laundry for just a few dollars.

This little gadget is wonderful for drying small pieces in limited space - here, our dive booties.   And, it stores flat - perfect for the boat. I'd never seen these hangers in the U.S.

Then, we got into historically-accurate reenacting with a focus on maritime,(photos, for example, here ) and all my careful wardrobe logic went totally out the window porthole.  Of course there was the storage issue: this stuff wasn’t exactly used very often so the space we were devoting to it was a big luxury.  The real news, though, came in the actual wearing of these clothes; we relearned what our forefathers knew.  Loose, light, natural fabrics – in this case, our linen shirts and sailors’ slops – are fantastically cool, easy to move around in, and durable.  They surprised us by beating the most high-tech of our modern clothing for comfort.  And check out the washing instructions that are sewn right into the label!  

Laundry instructions on my linen 17th century sailor's shirt: "Dip in creek.  Beat on rock.  Hang in tree to dry."

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