How to pick the right outfits and perfect your home/work balance
Don’t you think it’s rather funny that after all these years of female empowerment and emancipation we still don’t think we have the right clothes or that we have nothing to wear at all!?
Your clothes should be a strategic part of your life. They should play an active role in running your life efficiently and well.
With all the ups and downs of the last 18 months no doubt you will have experienced lockdown and working from home in some shape or form.
What did you wear when you started to work from home?
Did you run straight to your joggers and stay there?
I wonder why we did that? Start working from home and stop wearing the clothes we used to wear to go to work.
Why would you stop wearing your work clothes because you weren’t working in the office?
Is it because you equate those clothes with going to the office? And if you are no longer going to the office you don’t wear the clothes.
Or was it the change in routine? For many of us the working pattern of our lives changed overnight. We were stranded at home. We weren’t at our desks, in meetings, meeting people every day.
The two different physcial locations, home and work, have two different connotations. Work is probably where you are more formal, act in accordance with a certain set of rule created by others and have to meet criteria and standards set by others. Home is where you get to decide. It’s a freer space. So it’s understandable that you might ‘reject’ the clothes of your formal, more constrained environment, in favour of making your own rules as to what you are going to wear.
The pandemic has highlighted subconscious beliefs that we might have around the value of our own work, and, ultimately, our own value. That maybe that value was tied to a physical location or routine set of habits. For some of us that value wasn’t located within us so if I had said to you, “Well you can still dress up each day for work, except you will be working fromh home”, you might have said to me, “Why bother?”
Eighteen months on from the start of the pandemic, some businesses have entirely returned to the work space and some are adopting a new hybrid working solution/approach. So, for many of us, this new hybrid practice is the new normal.
Business owners have realised that working from home is a safe policy to adopt across the business. Productivity levels and effeciency levels have stayed high. Even more importantly, perhaps, the quality of life for so many of us has improved. Maybe we are no longer commuting, maybe we are now able to drop the children off and pick them up from schoo. Maybe we can now walk the dog at lunchtime or be in the garden to take a break during the day. in terms of daily quality of life, the world has changed for the better for many of us in a surprising way.
However I really want to encourage you to use your clothes strategically to help build your day. A well-dressed day can really be the “rails” on which the train of your working day rolls smoothly and happily. A well planned wardrobe can provide the framework you need to run your week well. And a well planned wardrobe can be developing the future you: If you are actively preparing what to wear on a daily basis you are engaging in the business of being you.
No matter what age you are, you should always be in the business of being you. The business of being you is about getting to know yourself. It is about learning to accept yourself, to live with yourself, to accept and love yourself. But that is only the begining. The business of being you is then about taking all of your and pouring yourself into your life 100%.
The business of being you happens every second of the day. Every moment of the day you are being you. And you choose how you want to show up as you. Every day.
As a woman who has created two female-focussed businesses, I am passionate about encouraging women to be their best: To look their best, and to live their best.
It has long been a desire of mine to create an environment where busy working women can come and restore and refresh. Where you can reset your minds and their bodies. It is a place of restoration to wellness. It is an environment where you drop your bags at the door, spend an hour looking after your brain and body and then return to the world refreshed and restored.
Work is currently in process to create reDRESS and we are really excited. Doors will open soon and if you would like to be the first to know when reDRESS is open and benefit from joining at founding member rates, then check out our about page here where you can read a bit more and sign up too: reDRESS – more info and sign up page.
Using clothes to get your home/work balance right.
What I am going to offer you today are two strategies – “the all in” and the “two pockets”. Read through the descriptions of each and see which one better applies to your life and your preferences.
The all in –
this strategy adopts the approach that you want to portray yourself in always the same way whether you are at work or at home. You will have one set of clothes from which you choose your clothes for your working week, for times when you are not working (for example if you work part-time), and for the weekend.
The integral 2 pockets –
This strategy applies if you want to have a change in the clothes you wear for work and the clothes you wear at home. It may be that your work demands a certain type of clothing to be worn. Or it could be that you want to keep the two areas of your life, work and home, separate. There is an overall design ethos and your personal style will be demonstrated in both pockets, hence integral. However you will wear a separate style of clothes on your ‘time off’ compared with your ‘time at work’.
For a greater description of the two strategies and to decide which one suits you the best and how to use it in your life for greatest effect, read 2 strategies to nail home/work style: which is yours.
