Creating an Exciting Style With an Ordinary Lifestyle

I’m not a particularly fancy person.

I live in the midwest, I have two kids, and I work from home. The rhythms of my life are pretty ordinary: I have no red-carpet galas to attend, no holiday office parties, no hot dates with strangers I’m trying to impress. I may not have a closet full of ball gowns, but my clothing still makes me feel vibrant and ready for each day - however ordinary it may be.

Women tell me their wardrobes are boring, they’re in a rut, and they don’t feel like they’re expressing their true selves - and then they say something like, “I’m retired so I don’t need fancy clothes” or “I work from home, so what’s the point?”

You don’t need an exciting lifestyle to have an exciting wardrobe.

An exciting wardrobe, after all, is just a wardrobe that makes you feel good when you open the closet door. It could be a collection of graphic tees and Converse, an array of super-comfy sweater tunics, or a selection of chandelier earrings.

Some of my clients who have made the very most progress with their personal style are women who are retired or work from home.

When you aren’t going to an office every day, when you don’t have to construct your image around an outside dress code, you have so much more freedom! But it also becomes extra important for you to have clothes that make you happy to get up and get dressed in the morning…or you won’t.

One of my clients in particular has made incredible strides with her morning routine this year. She homeschools, works from home, and when we first started working together, she was in a rut where she wasn’t enjoying her clothes at all. In fact, she hated them. She struggled to really “get ready” in the mornings, because there was nothing to get excited about and nowhere she needed to be.

Now she’s playing with jewelry, building a mix-and-match wardrobe of colors she loves, having fun with lipstick, and still feeling totally comfy around the house. She feels more motivated and she’s expressing her personality through her style. When she sends me photos of her outfits, the first thing I always notice is how happy she looks.

Want my help building an exciting wardrobe? I’d love to chat! You can schedule an exploration call with me here.

Your Style is Not What You Put on Pinterest

I used to create so many lush, beautiful Pinterest boards of what I thought my style was.

Expensive designer clothing. Fabulous photoshoots. Classic art. And lots and LOTS of stylized photos of gorgeous women. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if I wanted their style or if I just wanted to look like them.

Sure, I loved that green Dior jacket with the flared skirt and military buttons, and I definitely would have worn it if I’d had or wanted to spend $1400 on a fall jacket. I loved those images of women leisurely bicycling through the south of France wearing floral maxi dresses that somehow never got tangled in the spokes.

But was any of that representative of my style?

Nope. Most of it was a really nice looking distraction from me actually doing the work - and in some cases, even served as discouragement. “I’ll never look like her or be able to afford those clothes, so what’s the point?” Or maybe worse - thinking that because I put the effort into crafting the board, I was somehow representing it in real life.

Dreaming and planning are important parts of crafting your style, and I actually use Pinterest boards frequently in my coaching work and my own style evolution. I think it’s really, really important to dream your dream before you try to live it! If you don’t know anything about what you want your style to be like, you probably won’t have much of one.

I know because that was me. I bought clothing at random and didn’t know how to put together functional outfits. I panicked when I had to dress for a wedding. I wondered why every lipstick I tried looked weird on me. I thought I’d live the rest of my life as someone who just didn’t “get” how to dress, and I worried that everyone I interacted with would know I had no clue what I was doing.

To have an exceptional, immediately-recognizable personal style, you don’t need to enjoy shopping, have a huge clothing budget, look like a supermodel, or be gifted with an innate, creative know-how when it comes to style. You do have be intentional about your ideal look, and more importantly, make decisions based on that look. You need both the dreaming and the doing.

And if you want help, you know where to find me.

Working From Home Without Feeling Like a Slob

As someone who works from home, I know that it’s very tempting to secretly wear pajama pants with your nice top while you’re on a virtual call with a client. Or to roll out of bed and head directly for your inbox, only to look up and realize that it’s noon and you still haven’t showered. While doing those things once in a while can feel luxurious, doing them regularly can make you feel like your work life is one big sick day.

How we dress affects how we feel, and how we feel affects our productivity and our happiness. Here are some tips that have helped my clients and myself become better versions of our work-at-home* selves:

• Get what I like to call “grocery store presentable.” Even if you probably won’t be interacting with another human being, take 20-30 minutes to get dressed, wash your face, and fix your hair. Don’t make getting ready its own project, but do something to help yourself feel ready for the day. And then if you do have to run to the post office or the grocery store later, getting dressed isn’t a hurdle to leaving the house.

• Don’t reinvent the wheel. Trying to come up with a new and exciting outfit every morning is a recipe for disaster no matter where you work. This is where utilizing outfit templates (sign up for my email list if you haven’t already gotten your copy of my Easy Outfit Templates!) or even a daily uniform can come in handy.

• Dress for comfort. I believe in dressing for comfort no matter what, but I think it’s especially important when you work from home and the siren song of pajama pants is always calling. Make sure your clothing fits well and doesn’t distract you with uncomfortable fabrics. Stretch denim, ponte knit, and whatever fabrics you enjoy most are your friends.

• Accessories are essential. A lot of my work-at-home clients cite their outfits feeling “unfinished” as a major source of wardrobe dissatisfaction, and there’s no easier way to fix that problem than with accessories. Even if you wear the same pair of silver filigree hoop earrings every single day, they’ll still dress up your look. Lipstick counts too!

• Be intentional with your layers. Try not to throw on your ratty old robe when you’re working, even if it is the warmest and coziest thing you own. Better to spend a little time finding a great cardigan, a lightweight knit poncho, or a chic pullover that will keep you feeling in work mode. When you find it, buy it in two colors.

• Make your workspace comfortable. This isn’t strictly wardrobe-related, but when I upgraded my home office - investing in a laptop stand, an ergonomic keyboard, and a comfier office chair - I felt much less of a desire to wear house clothes when working, because I wasn’t trying to compensate for an uncomfortable workspace.

What are your favorite ways to dress up your work-at-home wardrobe? I’d love to hear some fresh tips!

*This post is geared toward people who work from home in any capacity, including stay at home/homeschooling parents, people who are retired, people who work from home on video calls, and people who work from home while never seeing another soul.

Don't Wait Until You've Lost the Weight

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to honor your body as it is right now.

That means giving up on the fantasy that your 30s body, your pre-baby body, or the body you think you should have had is your “real” body, waiting to whisk you away into a life of always feeling beautiful and pulled together.

Why are we so willing to look for awesome new clothes when we’ve gotten a new job or lost weight or our tastes have simply changed…but we drag our heels when we need new clothes because of weight gain?

Sometimes we just don’t know what we should be looking for. The styles we used to love no longer work (or we’re worried they don’t) and we don’t know where to start. Sometimes we don’t want to accept that our bodies have changed, possibly forever.

We all deserve to feel good in our clothes, moving through our days without body hatred or discomfort. If you’re suffering through too-tight jeans or bras that pinch, how is that going to help you love your body? How are you going to feel good in your style if its only real focus is distracting people from the perceived flaws of your body?

I should have bumper stickers made: “Your clothes are the problem, not your body.” I can feel like Aphrodite herself in one outfit, and a troll who lives under the bridge in another - all within five minutes. The danger of clothing that fits poorly or betrays your style is that it’s all too easy to believe you are the problem, and I can promise you - you never are.