Tossing Out a Couple of Suggestions to Clothes the Year

Y ear’s end is the traditional time for looking into our closets and taking stock of the fabrics of our lives. We plunge in and discover both old friends and items that we may never have gotten to know at all. Did I buy that? When? And, more important, why? Do you keep the questionable stuff and try to work it into your wardrobe, or do you chuck it and dip into the pocketbook to buy still more? It’s a traditional yearly battle, and it almost always comes down starkly around male/female skirmish lines.

HE: OK, I admit we need more room in the closet, but if you touch my golf shirts with the L.A. Open logo on them, Yankee, you die. I don’t want to hear the old refrain about never wearing them. These shirts have sentimental value. They remind me that for two days I was stomping around Riviera, elbow-to-elbow with Jack Nicklaus, my hero of heroes. You might as well ask me to slice out my own appendix with a potato peeler.

SHE: Why don’t you frame them and get it over with? Actually, I had my eye on your ties. I can see your treasuring the one you wore to your first dance, but the Chanel you bought at that garage sale has to go . The caviar stains wouldn’t come out, remember? You haven’t worn it once!

I guess I could lose a few pairs of shoes. But you know how everything comes back into fashion.

HE: Yeah, I can hardly wait for Earth Shoes to be in again. That walking-into-a-stiff-wind backward-leaning waddle is sexy as hell. And those five-inch platforms you kept falling off? You didn’t pack them in until you tripped on the moving ramp at the airport and spent that vacation in Hawaii in a cast. Yes, I agree, those shoes are essential to your current well-being. By all means, wait until America loses its collective mind once again and the disco age re-emerges. You’ll be ready.

SHE: You should talk. Do you think you’ll ever slip into those prescription Buster Browns again? Get ‘em bronzed already. We’ll put ‘em on the bookcase next to your only golf trophy.

And those hand-painted sandals you bought near Haight-Ashbury? Please. Jack Kerouac you’re not. And . . . yes! Here they are, your shiny John Travoltas! Lose ‘em. When somebody calls you Night Fever now, it’s because you have the flu.

Let’s make a deal: For every article you’re willing to give up, I’ll surrender one in kind.

What first, hmmmmmm?

HE: Weeeeeeelll . . . OK. I think I can let go of that sport coat with the lapels that look like the Flying Nun’s habit. And maybe a few of those T-shirts can go: I never really liked the long-sleeved one that says “I Survived the Harmonic Convergence,” and the “Party Naked” one with the food fight stains on it is probably a goner. And those saddle oxfords are a bit dweeby, I admit. But I’m keeping my baseball spikes.

SHE: And I’ll lose the pearl-smothered sweater your mother gave me when you forgot our anniversary. I still seethe when I look at it.

And, OK, I can lose some bathing suits. Eight is enough.

And good riddance to this leather skirt with the mildew. Yuck.

HE: I guess I can part with a few of those old ties in the formerly fashionable clown width, although I still like the one with the bare-breasted hula dancer painted on the inside (she looks just like you, dear, I swear).

Maybe a few of those giveaway ball caps, too. Losing the one with the sewage treatment plant logo won’t make me lose much sleep. Oh, and hey! Here’s that old ski parka made out of that Teflon-like material that turns you into a human toboggan if you fall and the parka actually comes in contact with snow. Away with it!

SHE: Out with the pantyhose crawling with runs! Out with the plastic visors--they kill my temples! Out with the faded jogging shorts! Out with all of these unpaired socks, though I hate tossing out this lace-trimmed pink one. Out with these old scarves! Begone old robes, badminton shoes and the grosgrain ribbon from my wedding bouquet!

Hey. Where did this book on Legal Separation in California come from?

HE: Wait! Slow down! Throttle back! You’re working yourself into a feeding frenzy--you’re chewing up the closet! Listen, I know all about that rule you hold so dear, the one that says if you haven’t worn it for a year you pitch it out. Wrong, I say! There’s all sorts of great stuff in here that I haven’t worn in the last 12 months that might be perfect for certain occasions, like Halloween. Unless something’s so thoroughly awful that you wouldn’t even make a dog bed out of it, you can always recycle it into some sort of bizarre costume.

SHE: Great. A closet crammed with would-be Halloween costumes for men. Just the thing to send me into the new year with a smile.