It took two subway trains and a bus to get home to Philadelphia for my Spring Break. I walked to the subway station with one duffel bag thrown over my shoulder stuffed with clothes, and a backpack full of shoes, my laptop, makeup and other miscellaneous items I thought I would need for a week. By the time I reached the bus stop to travel two hours home, I was out of breath from running because I thought I was going to miss the bus which ended up being 20 minutes late, and my back hurt. When I finally got home, I was too tired to unzip my duffel bag and find the comfy clothes I packed and found old blue pajama pants decorated with snowflakes and threw on a Volleyball t-shirt from high school and went to bed.
The next day was St. Paddy’s Day and I was so excited to wear the outfit I had packed — until I found a green T-shirt from the 5th grade that said “Irish Girls Rock” with a shamrock and decided to squeeze into it and wear it instead. Then the rest of the week, I wore the same ratty snowflake pajamas and old t-shirts. I looked at the duffel bag that nearly broke my back sitting on my bedroom floor half opened with all my nicely folded clothes inside. I felt kind of bad I didn’t wear any of them. What a waste of manual labor.
Why do we overpack? Even when I’m in the act of overpacking, I am consciously thinking “I know I’m not going to use all of this stuff,” yet I continue to pack it anyway. I think most of it comes from the fact that I need options. I never know what I’m going to want to wear at a moment so I need to pack six different tops and six different bottoms to try on (and ultimately wear none of it). I, of course, need three types of jeans: one dark pair, a light pair, and a black pair. Another part comes from the fear of necessity. I will want to be comfy so I need to pack sweatpants. I might go out so I need to pack heels (two pairs of options). I need my laptop to do homework and then get home and not do any homework. Overpacking makes us feel safe and that we absolutely have everything we need to leave for a period of time– all 27 pairs of underwear and all.
So then why do we wear 2% of the clothes we pack and find the rattiest pair of pajama bottoms and live in them for a week?
Well, I think for a couple reasons.
It feels nice to be lazy. I’m a full-time student, work two jobs, buy groceries, cook my own meals (even if it’s only just pasta), and other exhausting adult things. New York can also feel like an everyday fashion show. My closet in my New York apartment is much different than my closet at home. So going home for break should feel like a break, and maybe we want to dress the part. I lay on the couch, while my mother cooks me dinner, watching reruns of Friends wearing clothes that feel like a break.
I also forgot all of the stuff I left behind at home after I moved to New York. I love rummaging through drawers of forgotten clothes and flipping through my gigantic t-shirt collection. There’s my green shirt from when I was a summer camp counselor, and another from a co-ed high school Volleyball league my friends and I played in, and every soccer jersey I wore over a ten-year span. Those t-shirts are my past and putting one on comforts me. Old pajama pants have the same effect. They remind us of Christmas mornings, and sleepovers, and snow days when we had off from school. Or when we were sick and someone made us soup while we laid in bed, or chilly summer nights when we lost track of time talking in the backyard with our friends. Our old clothes are ratty and torn because they’ve been worn so much. They’ve been lived in and they remind us of a different time in our lives. Maybe one we’ve grown apart from.
So will I ever stop overpacking? Definitely not. And I won’t take my old pajamas and t-shirts back to New York with me either. They will stay tucked away in my drawer until I come home until I need them again.