Playing Dress Up

Today for work, I’m wearing a cardigan that I picked up off the floor. This is not the first time I’ve done this. It is however the first time I’ve realized just how lazy I’ve gotten about dressing for work.

In college, I used to dress up about once a week and wear business casual type clothes. Nothing fancy, just fancier than the jeans and a hoodie that I wore every other day. I remember telling my mom that I wanted to work in an office where you had to dress nice every day. Due to this thought, I wasn’t too disappointed to not get a job in an office where the person interviewing me had holes in his decades old sweatshirt and cargo shorts.

Seven plus years into this working full time gig, I’m over the dressing up every day thing. Although not quite to the point of wanting to wear clothes with holes in them to work. I’ve gotten increasingly lazy as time goes by. It started with the shoe drawer. I have a drawer of a filing cabinet dedicated to shoes simply so I don’t have to drag them back and forth with me every day. Next came the realization that you can wear just about anything under a cardigan or suit jacket. Not too long ago one of the guys I work with asked me “are you wearing a north face shirt to work?” In fact I was. But worn under a cardigan, it was almost unnoticeable.

But picking clothes up off the floor is relatively new for work wear. In my defense, I work with mostly guys and they never notice that type of thing. In fact, one day I wore my Chaco’s all day instead of changing into work shoes just to see if anyone would notice. No one did.

Now it’s become almost a game of seeing what I can get away and still be presentable for work. Today I had to figure out what I could wear to a client meeting in the morning and happy hour after work. Again, this is where the realization that you can wear anything under a cardigan or suit jacket is key. Throw on a jacket for the meeting. Take it off for the bar.

While wearing something off the floor may not be the classiest thing in the world, it sure does make it easier to get dressed in the morning.