But let's start with maternity clothes. Besides the fact that they're sometimes (often?) hard to find, uncomfortable, and expensive (for starters), they only last you a few months anyway.
With Matthias, I was bursting out of my normal-sized jeans somewhere in the first trimester. My belly band wasn't cutting it, and I already needed... maternity jeans. But I was still skinny everywhere BUT my belly, which meant that I got away with wearing very small-sized maternity jeans.
But time passed, and I gained some weight, and eventually... I needed a different size maternity clothes. Now that's just ridiculous. TWO sizes in MATERNITY clothes?!
It gets better.
Once my babies are born, I can still wear my "bigger" sized maternity clothes for a week or two, before they start looking like, "Oh, Tricia's still wearing maternity clothes--and they're a little big."
Which means that... I go back to my "smaller" size maternity clothes, or--as I did with Matthias--I went to Goodwill and bought whatever size in "normal" clothes that I would've worn at the time.
But then I lost weight. So one or two months later, my "transition" clothes were too big. So I bought *another* transition size.
Which led to my owning two FULL boxes of maternity and post-partum "transition-y" clothes... quite a bit of which, I didn't really like. It's just what I was able to find for a reasonable price.
So this time around, I finally decided upon a completely, totally different idea with my wardrobe. It was simple, and fairly inexpensive (because it was simple), and "worked" from PRE-Pregnancy, all Through The Pregnancy, and now, Post-Pregnancy.
It looked very much like This:
I call it my very own version of the extremely popular "Capsule Wardrobe," or...
My Solution to Maternity Clothes. ;)
Are you noticing a theme? It's called a Maxi Skirt. ;)
It helps that I wore stockings every day, so I honestly preferred to wear skirts every day versus jeans or pants. And once you've tried a maxi skirt while pregnant, and felt how comfortable that panel is on your belly, there's no going back to jeans. At least there wasn't for me. :)
So. I had a couple maxi skirts, and I bought a few more, in my pre-pregnancy size. I started wearing them pretty much as soon as my jeans stopped feeling comfortable--and I've worn them almost every day, ever since.
Ok, besides the skirt... my non-maternity "Maternity" wardrobe consisted of:
Plain-colored or polka-dotted or flowered top: bought mostly from Target, Goodwill, and Rue 21
LONG tank-top: this is how I was able to pull off the "normal" sized knit tops, because I bought extra-long tank tops to wear underneath! My current favs are from Forever 21 ($1.90 each!!)
Maxi skirt/skirt with super-stretchy waistband: Amazon, Gap (the best quality by far), Target, TJ Maxx, and second-hand
As for shoes, well, my foot hurts all the time when I'm pregnant, so I bought a pair of $20 slipper-like silver shoes from Target, and I wore them EVERY SINGLE DAY for about 6 months. So, yes, wearing only one pair of shoes--like, EVER, can be done--though it's nice to be out of pain now, and be able to wear heels, or boots, or flip-flops!
Accessories: Scarves (Walmart, Rue 21, gifts) and Jewelry (everywhere--but I especially like Rue and Forever 21's collections now)
Mixing up the accessories and shirts significantly helped with the "I'm wearing the same skirt to church three weeks in a row" situation.
The maxi skirts grew with me, and now, instead of trying to fit into jeans already, I'm still wearing those same skirts. They just look a little different! :) The advantage to this "capsule maternity wardrobe" is that I didn't have to buy any special maternity clothes, and now I don't have to buy any transition clothes.
Yes, I still have a small collection of "Skinny" clothes--the clothes that I wear for a few months, when I've lost all the baby weight, but that "wardrobe" really doesn't need to be extensive, as I don't last in that size long before... I start growing a baby again.
Ok, so I know this sort of idea will definitely NOT work for everyone. I was even wondering to myself why I'm all about simplifying, to the point of wearing only a handful of skirts over such a long stretch of time. What I came up with: for me, every child I have adds MORE to my life--more of my time and energy and thought... So every area that I can somehow TRIM down, really helps me!
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