My wee sister, Eugene, is shipping off to Paris for a semester abroad.

In case you were wondering, I’ve just spent a weekend at a wedding with a bunch of Irish people and “wee” is now a part of my vocabulary.

Anyway, my sister is currently packing for her time in Paris and I was called in to advise on the wardrobe selection process.

I arrived at 11:00PM last evening and we finished making the clothing selections at 2:00AM. And that was just her clothing.  We had yet to tackle shoes, scarves, belts, hand bags, jewelry, electronic devices, and period costumes.

We began the process giving each garment some thought about how many different ways it could be worn and how many seasons it could span.  After about an hour of this, my assessments were much quicker and resulted in either a head nod or a grunt.

We had a pile system going as well.  At the start, we had “yes”, “no”, and “maybe” piles.

There are a lot of nuances to building a fabulous wardrobe out of a limited number of items so our pile system expanded significantly to the following:

• “yes”
• “strong possibility”
• “potential”
• “maybe”
• “alternate”
• “probably not”
• “too specific”
• “too American”
• “I’ll wear that for you while you’re gone”
• “you already packed 39 ivory shirts”
• “no”
• “absolutely not”
• “why do you own that?”

Today, we tackled the remaining items and, by some miracle, everything that made the cut fit in these 2 suitcases.

I should really do this for a living.

I hope she left room for me.  I will miss that little booger.

Y’all come back,

Sugarlump