Everything I wear in September, honestly

It is February, it is gray, and I am writing a list about September like a woman reading a menu at a closed restaurant. Let me have this.

September is my month. Not summer, which I find exhausting, and not October, which is already trying too hard. September — warm afternoons, cold mornings, everything back on a schedule.

The nine things

• The oatmeal cardigan. Nine years old. Two small moth holes near the left cuff that I’ve decided are character.
• Straight-leg jeans, mid-wash, the ones I finally bought that fit.
• Three white tees, replaced every year in August, worn until they’re gray by June.
• One striped long-sleeve, navy and cream, from a shop that no longer exists.
• Brown leather loafers, resoled once, worth every penny of the resoling.
• A denim jacket that is older than my son.
• One black knit dress for the two occasions a season that require a dress.
• The thin gold necklace I have not taken off since 2019, including in the ocean.
• A big scarf that functions as a blanket, a pillow, and on one occasion a picnic surface.

Nine things, most of them older than my youngest child, and I have never once stood in front of the closet in September wondering what to wear.

That’s not minimalism. I own plenty of other clothes and most of them are fine. It’s just that these nine are the ones I reach for, and knowing that has saved me from about a hundred purchases I would have regretted.