I have been recently obsessed with this thread of thought after reading that Richard Branson wears one pair of jeans all of the time. Seriously. With all of that fame and fortune, this is his choice.

He owns one pair of jeans and a few white shirts (and an airline, countless properties, hotels, and an island.) He has an enviable lifestyle. He can fly anywhere and buy anything his heart desires, but he chooses to avoid “decision fatigue” by limiting his choices of what to wear to give his mind more freedom to make more important decisions. As Spock would say: fascinating.

So yes, he’s a guy, but this is quite drastic. Then I started to ruminate and I got nauseated. Could I ever do this? I am overwhelmed with options of clothing, accessories, and even underwear and I’m starting to feel terribly guilty about it all.

I thought of my friend Betsy whom I met on a writing expedition years ago. She is one of the coolest humans I have ever encountered. She’s a freelance writer and her husband is a photo journalist and they split their time between a little purple house in San Francisco and a small place in France.

Betsy always wore jeans and a black turtleneck when I saw her. It was her go-to outfit and she rocked it. It was both Euro and SF-chic and I remembered even back then envying the simplicity of that. Leave it to me. I would have complicated it with scarves and accessories, defeating the whole purpose.

Another ultra-cool writer friend lives in Carmel and has one pair of jeans and a dress for formal occasions. She can certainly afford more, but chooses to be a minimalist. She offered to come to my place years ago and declutter my closet. She was Marie Kondo before Marie Kondo! I was so afraid of the process that I declined. Back then I wanted to be the one to decide and now as I get older, those decisions can be confusing and time-consuming.

Very recently we had a tornado warning (yes, in Arizona!) and I was the epitome of a petrified California transplant, yanking things out of my small closet so I could hide in there, grabbing a bag of important documents, a photo of my mom, my phone, and computer – never once giving a thought to what I might wear. It might have been the most frightened I have ever been in this lifetime with the possibility looming of literally being uprooted and ending up in Kansas, found in my mismatching PJs which had been my choice for that morning’s attire. My choices were nearly made by circumstance as I envisioned the rest of my countless pairs of jeans spinning around me in a funnel across the desert.

I thought of all of those people who have actually experienced extreme weather on the planet. We were lucky and although the tornado touched down, it didn’t touch us. But it definitely touched and twisted my psyche.

The next day I started going through everything I have, filling bags for donations and consignment, whittling it down before God and Nature did it for me.

What we wear can be wearing us out. I am finding things in my closets and drawers that I thought I would wear “someday,” or for that lifestyle I fantasized about, or when I was thinner, or someone important saw me, or nobody saw me (the mismatched PJ thing.)
    I am grateful for the freedom of choices that I have had over the years, but I’m also ready to release more and more and liberate my cluttered mind and closet and hopefully make more important decisions like Richard Branson does.

With all of the ads popping up at us everywhere in the world and in our homes, on our computers and in our nightmares, I might not be quite ready to fall into “the Gap” with one pair of jeans, but I am ready to bridge it to a more sensible and manageable lifestyle.

I don’t own an island, but I like to visit one every now and then. Now it will be much easier to pack for the trip and I just might choose Virgin Airlines. Thanks for the tip, Rich!

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