Full Life Reflections

Striving for happiness, peace, and fulfillment in a chaotic world

Gray Hair Transition – Changing the Narrative (and More Tips on the Process)

Debbie Roes

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February 20, 2019

It’s been over four months since I last shared my thoughts and progress with my gray hair transition, so I thought I would give you another update today. As I revealed in my “Best of Full Life Reflections 2018” wrap-up, gray hair transition posts are the most popular on the site, so there is clearly a lot of interest in this topic. If you’re a new reader and want to check out all of my gray hair-related essays, you can find them all here.

Some Background Information

Those who have been following along for a while may remember that I first started to transition to my natural salt-and-pepper hair back in 2016, shortly before I turned 50.  I had grown weary of having to touch up my roots every four weeks and had become increasingly unhappy with how my color looked. At that time, my hair was very dry and damaged and my color often skewed too warm-toned and wasn’t uniform enough from roots to ends. Gray hair can be stubborn to color and because I’ve always had wiry and porous hair, my hair was even more unpredictable in its reaction to hair dye. So as I neared my milestone birthday, I decided to embrace my natural shade, no matter how gray it might be.

Shiny Silver Hair

In 2016, I decided to embrace my natural gray hair.

What I didn’t realize when I made that landmark decision was how difficult the process would be for me emotionally. It was easy in the beginning because I could easily hide my gray roots using an effective cover-up powder (which I recommend for extending the time between dye jobs or in the early days of transitioning to gray).  Such products are designed to be used for just a few weeks, but I managed to cover up my roots for close to six months! It didn’t look so great towards the end, but I mitigated that effect by wearing headbands, hats, and scarves.

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Why I’m No Longer Tracking What I Wear – and What I’m Doing Instead

Debbie Roes

26 comments

February 12, 2019

I have long been a proponent of wardrobe tracking. I summarized my reasons for this practice in an essay back in 2013, and I still stand by the points I made at that time. Tracking can help us to better understand what we have, wear, and need. I believe it would be helpful for almost anyone to do some form of wardrobe tracking for a period of time in order to increase their awareness and foster better shopping choices. All of this said, as I began 2019, I decided to stop tracking what I wear. In today’s post, I share my reasons for this decision, what I’m doing instead, and how I feel about all of this now that a month and a half has gone by.

no more tracking wears

In line with my “freedom” theme for 2019, I’m no longer tracking what I wear. 

The Upside and Downside of Tracking

I tracked what I wore every single day for eight full years, from 2011 through 2018! I did this via a mostly low-tech method of using hang-tags to capture the immediate data and a spreadsheet for compiling longer-term information and making sense of it. Through my rigorous tracking, I came to understand what types of pieces in my closet were worn often (the “all-stars”) and which items rarely made their way off their hangers (the “benchwarmers”).  This information helped to guide my purchasing decisions such that I stopped buying a lot of dressier pieces, uncomfortable shoes, and things that didn’t dovetail well with my body, lifestyle, and personality. I gradually made fewer mistakes and started to see lower cost-per-wear on many of the items I owned.

While there were a lot of positive outcomes to my wardrobe tracking, there were also some negatives. Although the tracking only took me a minute or two each day, the end of the year tabulations occupied many hours. I had to make sure that all my new pieces were added to my spreadsheet and all purged items were deleted. If I were a wardrobe minimalist, this wouldn’t be all that labor-intensive, but with the type of “closet churn” I endured each year, it was no easy feat. I also had to spend a big chunk of time on either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day entering the year’s numbers into the spreadsheet. Fortunately, my husband helped with this activity, but I can think of better ways to spend that holiday! The data analysis also took a lot of time to complete and even though I’m a “numbers nerd,” it could be burdensome at times.

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Fall Capsule Challenge Recap and Wardrobe Goals for 2019

Debbie Roes

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January 31, 2019

As you may remember, I decided to do a capsule wardrobe challenge during the last two months of 2018. My reason for doing this was to shift my focus away from what’s in the stores and toward what I have in my closet. I wanted to better understand what was and wasn’t working for me and why, and I have found that limiting my choices for a period of time aids me in this effort. In today’s post, I will recap my fall challenge, share a bit about the state of my wardrobe as 2018 came to a close, and highlight my clothing and shopping goals for 2019.

About My Fall Challenge

Before I delve into numbers and insights from my fall challenge, I want to first summarize the rules I followed when getting dressed during November and December. My challenge was kind of a hybrid of Project 333 and the “30 for 30 Remix,” plus I added some of my own personal twists to get the most possible learning out of the exercise. Here’s a basic overview of what I did:

  • I dressed myself using two separate 30-item capsules for my “out and about” and at-home wardrobes. These capsules were built organically as I went along throughout the challenge.
  • While I didn’t include shoes and accessories in my 30 items, I kept track of which ones I wore and how many times they were featured in my outfits.
  • I kept an outfit journal for my “out and about” ensembles in which I rated each look and made notes about what did and didn’t work. I also kept track of any pieces I wanted to reach for but didn’t have on hand (either in the capsules or at all).
  • After I reached the 30-item limit in my capsules, I allowed myself the option to swap items out for either weather or style-related reasons. The “weather clause” was necessary because November is often quite warm where I live and cool weather doesn’t generally begin until later that month or early December.
  • Items that I swapped out for style-related reasons were placed “on probation” and at the end of the challenge, I needed to re-evaluate whether or not they should remain in my wardrobe.

The timing of the challenge worked out perfectly, as I wore my thirtieth “out and about” outfit on December 31st.  Below I share my capsules, what I swapped out and why, some wear statistics, and what I learned from taking on the challenge (I already shared some mid-challenge insights back in December).

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Debriefing the Year of “Essential” – and What’s Next for 2019

Debbie Roes

18 comments

January 24, 2019

It’s time for another 2018 wrap-up post! This one focuses on reviewing my theme for the year, “essential,” and reflecting on the various ways that it has impacted my life. I will also share the key word/theme I have selected for 2019 and my reasons for choosing it.

2018 theme review

Since 2014, I have been selecting yearly themes that encapsulate primary focus areas for improving my life experience. These overarching themes often also highlight what I’m hoping to create in my emotional landscape. Choosing a word or theme for the year is generally a lot less overwhelming than writing out a long list of goals, but it can still be highly effective at moving our lives forward in a positive direction. If you’d like to read more about the practice of choosing a yearly word or would like guidance on selecting your 2019 word, the following articles can help:

Of course, you don’t need an e-course or to follow a specific process in order to find your word, but I’m including these resources for those who feel they could benefit from them. It’s perfectly fine to just go with whatever word intuitively stands out for you. That’s pretty much what I did this year, as I will share later in this post.

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The Best of Full Life Reflections 2018

Debbie Roes

12 comments

January 9, 2019

Happy New Year! Now that 2019 has begun, I’d like to take some time to reflect back on the past year with a few retrospective posts. This first one focuses specifically on this blog, Full Life Reflections. I started the blog – my fifth! – on January 7, 2019, so it’s now a year old. While I haven’t posted as often as I’d hoped, I did publish 33 essays in 2018 on a variety of topics, from life balance and fulfillment to wardrobe management and gray hair transition.

Today, I’ll share the most popular posts from 2018, as well as my personal favorites (I did this each year of Recovering Shopaholic, too, and you can find those posts here). I will also highlight the most clicked outgoing links by visitors to the blog.

best of 2018

The 12 Most Popular Posts

The 12 posts below received the most traffic out of all of the articles I published during 2018. As you can see, the most popular topics were wardrobe management and gray hair transition. That was a bit surprising to me, but I guess it shouldn’t be, as those subjects (well mostly the first one…) are what I’m generally known for.  I will continue to write about clothes and hair this year, as well as the other life topics I enjoy exploring. You can browse all of my articles by topic on the sidebar of every page on the site, and a full listing is available on the Article Archive.

Those who are new to Full Life Reflections will get a chance to check out the highlights of 2018, and longtime readers will have an opportunity to revisit posts they either missed the first time around or would like to explore again.  I plan to re-read many of these essays myself, as I need reinforcement on some of the topics! The posts are listed in order of the traffic received, with the first one being the most popular by far (clearly a lot of people are interested in gray hair transition these days!). Included is a brief synopsis of what each article is about, along with updates in some instances.

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