Making an effort to wear dresses

I've never had very many clothes. I used to think that was because I wore uniform at school and so I didn't need that many other clothes, but that was a long time ago, and although I've had plenty of opportunity to increase my wardrobe size since I often look at my clothes and think that I don't have a lot of choice. I think I'm just a bit lazy about buying new clothes!

Every day I wear jeans and a top - short sleeved in summer, long sleeved when it gets a bit cooler, and something warm and cosy on top for winter. But in my wardrobe I do have a reasonable collection of smart dresses for going out that I've picked up over the last few years. We still seem to have quite a few wedding invitations, and also as we are lucky enough to go on a cruise from time to time it's nice to have a few to choose from when you need to dress for dinner every night, but compared to the frequency with which I wear them the number that I have is a bit excessive.

I do find it much easier to find dresses that fit me than trousers. I hardly have any pairs of trousers because it's difficult to find ones that don't gape at the back or aren't too long. I also wear out the knees on my jeans astonishingly quickly, even now I'm well past the 'crawling on the floor with toddlers' stage.

However I only ever wear dresses for special occasions, and I feel really self-conscious when I wear them. Some of them are a little skimpy, but I think that I can pull them off, especially if I'm wearing thick tights, and I really do like wearing them. If I'm going out for dinner with friends I will try and make an effort to wear one, but I always feel over dressed, even if others are dressed up too.

I can't imagine turning up on the school run wearing a dress, even though plenty of the other Mums do, I'd think that everyone was staring at me! I missed an opportunity last September when the children started a new school, I could have re-invented my style completely and no-one would have known!

I do remember making a resolution a few years back as part of my Day Zero Project to wear a dress or a skirt for a week, and even though it was one of the easiest things on the list I never actually got around to doing it! So I've decided that I need to try and make an effort to get more wear out of the dresses in my wardrobe. Maybe not the really fancy ones - I'll save those for the cruise ship - but the simpler, more comfortable ones could easily become more every day wear, especially when the weather is a bit warmer, or perhaps with tights or leggings as we come into autumn and winter.

Are you a fan of dresses, or are you more of a jeans and t-shirt person like me?

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