Let's Play Dress-Up!

If there was a competition for the "World's Worst Packer", I would be a serious contender. I may have even won the crown in 2007 (I'll get to why in a minute). Some of you may be confused by this, since I will brag about my mad packing skillz at any possible opportunity. As I've said many times, Mary Poppins ain't got nothin' on me!

You see, what I am 'good' at is fitting an obscene amount of stuff into a suitcase and talking my way out of overage charges at airport check-ins. This is because I am not so good at making sensible decisions about what I will and won't need while I am away from home.

I have done a good deal of traveling over the years, but for some reason my packing abilities just became more and more chaotic with each passing trip. Actually, so did everything about my travel arrangements. After awhile I pretty much stopped planning and started just showing up and hoping for the best. (I really wouldn't recommend this approach to travel.)

Arguably the height of my insanely irrational travel packing/planning was my 2007 trip to Peru. I was spending a week in Lima to present a paper at a conference, and then was spending a week in Cuzco as a care-free tourist. It was winter in Peru, and like many North Americans, the idea that winter in the southern hemisphere could be cold seemed completely ridiculous to me. Also, having never been to an academic conference before, I had no idea what was appropriate to wear.

Faced with the task of packing for this trip, I was completely perplexed and overwhelmed. The solution? Two massive suitcases stuffed to the brim! Since I had no idea what I would need, I decided to just pack a little bit of everything. Except warm clothes. I had 2 cocktail dresses and about 5 pairs of shoes that I couldn't actually even walk in, not that they actually went with the dresses anyways! And when I tried to assemble something professional looking for the conference, I realized that I did not actually have any pieces that fit together in that way.

Joni's Top Ten Style Tips #3: Know Thy Wardrobe!

A year later, having carted half of Canada down to Melbourne with me (except for my warm clothes) I came across such a sensible tip in InStyle magazine that I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. This article was a guide of what to pack for a holiday, and took you through having a couple key pieces and some basics that work with a lot of different things so you can easily mix and match and create heaps of unique outfits from a small number of items. ... DUH!!!

My style tip to you is this: Think about the different pieces you have in your wardrobe and figure out which ones go together. Experiment with this! Sometimes all it takes is an extra layer to completely transform an outfit. Being aware of what you already have and the different way you can combine things makes shopping for new pieces a much more focused task (which I'll be discussing further in the next style tips installment).

Also, think about the accessories you have (shoes, jewellery, hand bags...) and what they go with. Back in the days when I had money to spend frivolously, I often came home with a gorgeous new pair of shoes that I didn't actually have anything to wear with. This is not practical! You know what happens to those shoes? They gather dust (metaphorically anyways, I'm anal about my shoe care) and then I eventually give them away to whoever'll take them off my hands.

So go forth, search out your wardrobe, and start playing dress-up! You never know what amazing combinations you could discover. You might even discover that that thing you just had to have but then never wore has some life to it yet!