I threw clothes away today, and I can’t help but think it’s wasteful. And, really, it is. It’s against my nature to simply throw something usable away, but I’m learning to adapt.

Part of this issue was being raised with thrift; not just because we didn’t have a cent to spare, but because my mother was a child of the Depression Era and she would rather find a home for something than to simply throw it away. Once I moved away from home, any time I visited, she would try to give me something before I left. I recognized it, later, as simply something her family did to reuse everything; she was second youngest of ten children, after all, and I’m positive there were a ton of hand-me-downs. As the only girl in my family, I didn’t often deal with them, unless they came from Mom.

That stopped when I was a teenager; not only did I grow a little taller than her, but I eventually started gaining weight. She was of average weight, and never really ventured far into overweight. Me, though? I made up for everyone in my family that was never overweight (or not by much, anyway).

As a morbidly obese woman, my extreme plus-size clothing was expensive. I tried to get by on sales and the like, but quite often, I had to get rather expensive clothing in off-colors and styles. Not just because that’s what was available on sale, but because that’s what was available at all in the sizes I needed. At size 4X tops and size 32W jeans, I had to take what I could get.

Over the years, my cyclical weight loss efforts drove me straight to the thrift store, and even then, plus size clothing was relatively scarce, but at least I could live with the prices when I found them. Still, I ended up with the odd styles and colors available. Over the duration of my recent weight loss efforts, though, those thrift stores were both my joy and my bane; if I found something I really liked, I’d buy it and wait until I was that size (eventually), and then not feel awful about how much I spent on it when it no longer fit. Not to mention, I was confident that the clothes would find a home with someone else when I donated them back to charity thrift stores.

Sometimes, I still wander the thrift stores, but I’ve been below plus sizes for a few years, now, and I had to come to the realization that I couldn’t donate everything back that was too big. Even the most casual of plus-size clothing might find a home because of relative scarcity and cost. The same isn’t true for the sizes I wear, now, so I’m more selective about what I donate. I don’t want to put the burden on charity thrift stores to deem something not worth selling because they already have 57 of that same item.

I’ve also become more selective about what I keep. I’ve stopped buying things just because I need to make do with something — because I don’t have to make do, anymore. There’s no reason for me to keep a pair of shorts that just has never fit quite right or something I bought on sale. So I’ve been reducing the things that no longer serve me. I don’t need twenty t-shirts unless they mean something to me. I don’t need to keep washing/folding/putting those awful shorts with the shallow pockets back in the drawer. (What’s up with those pockets, anyway?) Those capri-length workout pants? I never liked them.

While thinning down what I have is freeing, I’ve also been fighting the thrifty part of me that has spent a lifetime reusing items that I no longer need. I came to the hard reality that in my little town, there’s no such thing as textile recycling and I’ve just been putting the burden on someone else to decide if something still has usable life. While I still embrace the practice of donating (especially lately, going through the last of my mother’s things), I hope that my acceptance of filtering the worth of what gets donated means those donations end up serving the purpose I hope they will; whether filling a need in someone else’s life, or the income covering necessary costs for the charity.

Eventually, my current batch of clothing just might end up too big, but at least I will like everything I give space to. It no longer makes sense to hang on to things that I just don’t like for the sake of thrift and size.