It’s tough being a nouvelle fashionista with a sudden influx of clothes: the myriad outfits that can be created with a few well-chosen separates! After taking my nine-year old granddaughter Roxy on a surprise shopping trip to the mall, I found her under the covers at midnight with a flashlight trained on a pad of yellow Post-Its, scribbling away, making a graph to help her decide what outfit she would wear the next morning for a play date. “I’m a Libra, and I have a hard time making decisions, so I like to make charts to help me.” 

If I parse this Post-It correctly, the contenders were a dark jean jacket with rainbow rhinestones and jean shorts with black
leggings vs. a white sleveless jean jacket with rhinestones and a white flip skirt and white leggings. ‘Sandlas’ seemed to fit the footwear bill for both outfits, dark or light, messy or clean, cute or not. 
 
Dark won. But its victory was short. Within a half hour Roxy and her friends had changed outfits three times, mixing and matching furiously, and then ran out to kick a ball around on the sidewalk in their old, comfortable clothes.
 
They found this blue stickie taped to the front fence.
Susan Dworski
Susan Dworski
I keep both notes stuck to my computer monitor, not just for a smile. 
 
Blue tells me it’s OK to run around screaming “there’s no place like home!” Yellow reminds me of the egregious amount time we women spend during our lives fretting about just the right outfit to match the weather and our tasks, to get over on our girlfriends, repel our mothers, shock our fathers, get a date or snag a mate. Rarely is comfort a priority. And honestly, how often does the planning pay off? 
 
Even better, ‘flexibal’ is right up there with ‘cute’ in yellow’s ‘Good’ columns. Not a bad way to approach one’s closet, or indeed life.
 
Editor’s Note: We’re fond of this other great use of Post-Its from an eleven-year-old friend: Use them to stick signs on someone!

Sally Schneider

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3 replies on “The Subversive Power of Post-Its

  1. Oh yes! On all counts. I love how she improvised within the perimeters she set for herself. And running around the orange tree…or any tree…is good medicine, Amen!

  2. You may want to look at the writer Will Self, who is an obsessive post-it note user as part of his creative process. Quite interesting.

  3. Hello….!!! and thank you Pamela. I’ll take a look.

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