A Guide to Elegance: A - Adaptability

This week's entry is Adaptability. It's a short piece, only a page really, but an important lesson. In it, Dariaux discusses how one goes from morning to evening, a difficult challenge today for women.  Men don't seem to have this problem since a suit is always acceptable.

For women, she suggests something very similar to what most magazines would suggest - a low cut dress with a jacket over it in a dark color (she specifies wool) and accessories in your daytime handbag that can convert the outfit to evening, including an evening bag and jewelry. I've always wondered where one stashes the large bag when they go out for the evening...do you leave it at the office? I suppose if you're taking your car you can leave it in there, though this doesn't work in, say, New York City where people are more likely to take a cab or subway to their evening destination.

My favorite part, no surprise, is the shoes. She advises that "patent leather and fine calfskin pumps are chic all around the clock", advice that holds true now. She warns against suede shoes, which are strictly daytime, and strappy sandals, which are for evening. The first time I read that, I scoffed a little at the idea, but more and more I think she's right. I have a pair of wonderful suede open-toed black heels that I really like, but if I'm getting dressed up for an evening, they feel drab.

Overall, her advice is that adaptability requires planning and forethought, which is still quite true and applies to far more situations that just what you're wearing. It is far easier to take things as they come if you know you're ready, no matter the outcome. It is because of this that I started keeping an umbrella in my car, in case of rain (important on the coasts or in the desert during Monsoon Season), as well as a pair of flats in my glove compartment. If I have to change a flat tire in the rain, I don't want to be worried about my shoes!

All of this ties back into her overall theme, that elegance is as much an attitude as anything else. If you are confident in your ability to handle what comes at you with a smile and a laugh, then you are truly adaptable.

Cleanliness is Next to Elegance

As we previously discussed, elegance is unique for each person - how they define it, what is involved in acquiring it. In most definitions, a level of order in life is required, as frantic people are rarely elegant. For me, order and cleanliness are the cornerstone of an elegant life. Everything else in life is easier, flows better, when things are clean.

That starts with my home. An orderly, clean home is vital. It means that, when people drop in, I don't stress about how the house looks, because I know that it's mostly clean at the very least, and there's nothing I can't correct with the closing of a laptop and tidying of the desk. It means that, when I wake up in the morning, I can walk bleary-eyed through my bedroom, because there's nothing to trip on, and I'm greeted with a clean kitchen in which to drink my morning tea.

I have tried many systems over the years to manage this, with varying levels of effectiveness. There are a lot of factors - how many people live in your house, how messy those people are, how much time you spend out of the house each day - but I have finally stumbled on a system that I am a fan of, with a few minor modifications. Becky, over at Clean Mama, has a lot of ways to clean pretty much everything, and I'm starting to feel like a trip to her house might be a pilgrimage worth taking, just to see it in it's organized glory. She was kind enough to give me permission to talk all about her.

One of the key features to her blog and site is her phenomenal printables. She has packs of them available on her Etsy store, but every month she shares a free printable for keeping your house clean on a daily basis. The daily work takes very little time, though I've made a few adjustments to incorporate it into my own life better. Here are my tips for using the Free Monthly Printable from Clean Mama:

1. Print it out. I despise paper in my house and have been working towards eliminating it (starting by using some of Becky's tips in her How to Stop the Paper Trail article), but this I print out in full color every month. It hangs on my fridge where I can't miss it. This way, I can cross things off, mark weeks when I'm out of town as a sort of visual reminder, and attach sticker timers for medications for me and my dog.

2. Feel free to make adjustments. I don't do laundry every day, because I make very little laundry by myself, and I wash my towels on Monday when I clean my bathroom (per the schedule). That said, I do follow most of the rest of the schedule and I can see how this will adapt well once there is more than me to think about.

3. Know that it takes some time to adjust to cleaning a little everyday. If you're normally a marathon cleaner, but don't like the process, this is a great change from that, but it does require some changes in your time. I do my cleaning in the morning after my news-and-tea, but it works just as well to spread it out or do in the evening.

Some people thrive in a little clutter and there is an elegance to a space overflowing with signs that you love something, like a study overflowing with books or an artist's studio splattered in paint. But for a lot of people, those are private and personal places. For everything else, the places where others go, elegance generally demands some sense of order. For some of us, it is imperative that our spaces be clean, and be available for guests in a moment's notice.

So, do you demand cleanliness from your space, or does a little clutter do your soul good? Do different spaces have different rules? And if you are a cleaner, what system do you use?