As regular readers might remember, my previous “stable” weight was around 195 for several years before I ballooned up to around 220 about 2 years ago.  I have TONS of clothes that fit at 195, and even more at 180 (where I was when I moved to France 6 years ago).  For a long time I kept my off season clothes as a jumbled mess of off-season PLUS not-fitting.

Changing seasons was always depressing, because I’d find these smaller clothes I liked mixed in, but no hope to wear them.

Finally this Spring when I changed out the Winter for the Summer I did a complete overhaul and actually made THREE types of boxes.  Some are labeled “Season”, some are “19.5″ and some are “1.8″.  My husband doesn’t need to be all up in my business about the scale or my sizes, but he does need to put the boxes up and down for me (so 19.5 is my vaguely-coded 195 and the 1.8 corresponds to 180).  Of course, the code is actually pretty good since my husband is French and therefore neither Pounds nor American Sizes mean anything to him - if it was in kilos or French sizes he’d catch on, but for him it’s actually meaningless.  I prefer it that way.

This was the first season I’ve used the new system, and it was a BREEZE.  Not only easier to change clothes (because fewer boxes to go through) but also none of the beating-myself-up bits about not fitting into something).

I finally accepted my weigh in this week at 197.  The scale has actually been touching on 195 in the past few weeks - inconsistently but it’s coming … The big thing is that I am having a hysterectomy in a few weeks, and I expect to have big-time belly bloat for several weeks after that — and who knows what my weight will do for the several weeks of recovery.  So I decided that celebrating getting to 195 will have to wait until I’m back at 195 AFTER the surgery (even if I manage to touch it briefly in the next week or two again).  Those 3 boxes of 19.5 will have to wait for me. But when I get in them, I will be CELEBRATING!

In the meantime, as usual, I’m all giddy about finding my off-season clothes again, having forgotten about a few items that I really like.  I’m better about retiring things now at the end of a season, because I’m always glad to see it around again a few months later, and it keeps the garments in better shape to not be worn 12 months a year.