I’m not sure what to say.

“Oh Katie, what a cute shirt!  Where did you get it?”

“Oh thanks!  It’s from Ann Taylor Loft… umm… over two years ago.”

I keep thinking about how I should probably start buying more clothes again.  I don’t need new clothes.  So I stop and ask myself why I’m compelled to go buy some then.  And you know what I figure?  I think I should go buy more clothes because THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE DO.

“You can if you want, Katie,” Martin will say.

“But what do we need?”

“Nothing,” we’ll say in unison.

I had an hour to kill while Martin was meeting someone from The University of Colorado Boulder on our way to Germany a month ago.  So I did what any girl would do.  I went to the mall.  I went into a place – I think it was called Nordstrom Rack.  Is that right?  I was coming from Carhartts land and bracing for jetlag, so don’t get to tough on me.

I was floored by all of the women pushing grocery carts of clothes to the dressing room.  I mean, they just had clothes and clothes.  Where they buying them all?  According to author and activist Elisabeth Cline, we are.  She discovered that:

The average American woman purchases 60 pieces of brand new clothing every year.

She describes how the quality of our clothing has plummeted.  (Isn’t that just exactly what our grandmas keep complaining?)  We’re needing bigger closets.  We’re chasing trends.

We’re feeling inadequate.

Why have we let ourselves feel this way?  How do you suppose clothes shopping has become a hobby?

Elisabeth says:

The average American woman owned nine outfits in 1930.  Nine!

I would so love to read the book where she found this data - Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class.

I recently stumbled on a clothing project from 2005.  A woman named Alex Martin decided to wear the same dress every day for a year.  She didn’t style it with hundreds of dollars of accessories or own several of the same dress.  She just kept wearing the same one – day in, day out.

“Did I look crazy?” she wrote in her online diary.  ”Most people in my professional circle didn’t even notice that I was always wearing the same dress day after day — my take on that is that we’re all too busy with our *own* appearance, family, work, etc. to keep a tally on everyone else’s wardrobe rotations!”

And then this anonymous woman above said, “In my 20s I was worried about what people thought of me.  In my 40s, I didn’t care what people thought of me.  In my 50s, I realized that they weren’t thinking of me all along!”

So today I have an interesting question for you.  How many pairs of clothes do you think you could happily live with?  Step away from what other people think.  Forget about what you worry that they must be thinking.  This question is just you.  How much clothing might be your happy point?

Where do you think you’d be content? 9 like in 1930?  900?  a number in between?

Yesterday I hopped on my bike to meet a few old friends.

These two girls weren’t just any friends; they happened to be huge inspirations in my business work.  I’ve created a lot of the writing prompts you see in the {She} and {Love Where We Live} journals because of these two.

I didn’t get home until almost 10:00 pm.

Martin wasn’t worried.  He knew. He knew these girls are my closest friends in Germany, which surprises both of us when we pause to think about it.

They don’t speak English.

The three of us met in December 2009 when our German teacher assigned us seats in language class.  (She was very strict about never letting people sit next to someone with the same native language, so we were forced to speak in German all the time.)

So there we were.  Russian.  American.  Russian.

I still remember our teacher giggling with pride as she saw the three of us work together and grow in friendship.

When you are not fluent in a language, it can be hard to convey your message.  You get creative.  You fill with gratitude when the other person laughs or nods because she gets what you’re saying.  What a beautiful relief to be understood!

When I speak with a German, I get really self conscious.  I know my grammar is bad, and I don’t want to sound foolish.  So more often than not, I choose to talk as little as possible.  I work on blending in even if the customer right before me spoke English the entire time.

When I meet with my friends, our grammar is not very beautiful.  We’ve seen Germans practically choke in cafes as they eavesdrop on our long stumbling chats.  But we’re in it together.  And just when I might complain about how little sun there is in Berlin, they start celebrating how much warm sunshine we’re getting compared to their hometowns.

And look at the sign I spotted on our adventure!  Can you recognize that word?

I’ll give you a little hint….

Bibliothek means library, and my shop, Gadanke, is based on the other word, Gedanke, which means thought, mind, or idea.  An idea library!

So it probably comes as no surprise that my mind has been overflowing with creativity and story.  These girls?  They’re making my mind soar:  How do you bring out stories?  How do you celebrate the good stuff?

We hugged our goodbyes.  I flipped on the little light on my bike and rode home with a huge smile… a very American smile, they always laugh and tell me!

All night long, I dreamed I could speak Russian.  Boy – wouldn’t that make things simpler!

But then, where would my courage in German come from?  Where would Gadanke be today?

Back when I fully intended to work in the corporate world, I was ecstatic to land my first big job.  A couple of weeks later, my sister stopped by to say hello.  She looked around the little apartment Martin and I had.

Then she said in awe,

“Katie, I didn’t think I’d ever see dust where you live!”

I froze.  I laughed.  And then for the first time, my sister stuck out a finger and swirled it across the dust on my shelf.  It was her great victory.  She was ready to hug me in only the way a little sister finding a flaw in her bigger sister ever could.

From the second we’d each gotten our own bedrooms as kids, I was always dusting my room (leaving a thick, toxic gloss of dusting spray on everything) and doodling in the dust of hers.

Do you suppose she quit dusting her room just to irritate her sister?  Nahhh.

That day of my sister doodling in my dust was years ago.  (Just look how young we were!)  But the message I learned that day resonates in my mind every time I grab a dusting rag:

You cannot do everything.  You cannot keep up with everything.  And you know what?  That’s okay.

Gunilla Norris wrote, “My life will always have dirty dishes.”

The Nester always says that your home “doesn’t have to be perfect to be beautiful”.

(packing suitcases for later)

As my business grows, I’m learning this more and more.  I’m deleting more and more things on my to do list that don’t matter.  There are still so many “that doesn’t matter” items that keep sneaking onto my list.

Then sometimes I unintentionally delete the things that do matter. Do you ever do that?

Somewhere, there is a happy middle in our lives – balancing home, family, and work.  That place shifts with each season.  It’s not even the same day-to-day.  And that’s okay.  The growing dust bunnies in the corner of the living room?  I’m learning that they’re okay.

How can we begin to love where we live if we can’t step back and say, “It’s okay.”?

Maybe your home is messy.  Maybe it’s not decorated like the magazines.  And maybe… just maybe… you have tire trim in the living room, and you think that’s just weird.

Here’s a page of Stephanie‘s {Love Where We Live} journal.  I love how the two pages on this very topic are side by side… and how she embraces her space just how it is.

Home – it’s such a sweet and sacred space.  Are you celebrating its imperfections?  Are you being okay with the things you just can’t get to?

pssst – my sister just wrote at Frosting for the Cause – a sweet cake decorating blog dedicated to raising money for the American and Canadian Cancer Societies and donating handmade treats to local women’s hospice programs.  Here’s my big sister high five!  Will you swing over and help me share the love?

How to scare the geebers out of the online world:

1. arrive in your new world just in time for an awful, awful e coli outbreak
2. fall behind on blogging

I’m so sorry for that!  We have been traveling, and I confess that instead of writing to you before we hit the road, I spent time meeting with other expats (like the oh-so-inspiring Beth, Toma, and Di).

There is something incredible about expat women.  I think it’s bravery.  It’s how they inspire me to keep reaching further and keep celebrating the victories and beauty of everyday. This morning, a man asked me what the bravest thing I ever did was.  I think it was becoming an expat.  But not just that.  It was learning to strive in a foreign country without using Martin as my crutch.  (Here’s my first big leap.)

Being an expat who follows in the wake of her Germany husband?  Well that’s pretty easy.  (But so lonely)

So much beauty comes in life when we spread our wings all for ourselves.

Being in Berlin is like opening a time capsule of stories.  I see little tags for journals, scraps of notes for the {Journey} travel journal, and even the little paper I used to brainstorm the name Gadanke!  I feel how much those wings have strengthened and grown.

The sensation of revisiting these things is just like opening the pages of an old journal – seeing bits of ourselves from days past.

It’s asparagus and strawberry season around here.  This table was a display at a restaurant we walked by in Southwest Germany with family friends.

Asparagus and strawberry season.  That’s a really tough thing with the e coli in Northern Germany (which includes Berlin).  The produce aisle feels eerie.  I walked by a lonely lady at a strawberry stand about 10 days ago, then it was as if her stand were abandoned.  Whoosh.

We’re using soap to wash fruits and cooking all our vegetables.  Summer isn’t supposed to taste that way!

How does your summer taste?  Who will you spend it with?