GRWM: A Few Lazy-Girl Hacks for Leaving the House

And how I fit into a Utah-Mormon-girl stereotype.

In seventh grade, I started to actually understand I was a physical body. Friends constantly talked about my appearance, and their appearances, and it was like I’d woken up from a twelve-year dream. People cared if my hair was parted weird? They could see the blackhead on my lip? They watched me walk, judging me if my jeans didn’t fit quite right? I crossed so many beauty thresholds in a short amount of time: my friends taught me how to wear makeup (badly), they cornered me to pluck the stray hairs around my eyebrows (terrifying), and they admonished me about the correct hair straightener brand (CHI, at the time). 

I remember gathering the stray dollar bills and change from babysitting jobs and telling my mom I was off to the grocery store about a mile down the road. My friends and I were going to buy eyeshadow, for me specifically. My mom sighed instead of asking her usual logistical questions; she looked sad in a way I didn't understand then, but totally understand now. Childhood, in one small way, was ending. 

Beauty was a Utah Mormon girl’s currency, and so looking like other Utah Mormon girls actually felt like a good thing. We were like little clones running around our junior high hallways, our hair curled, our makeup done, our Abercrombie or Hollister clothes bright and overtly recognizable. I started seeing myself differently; I wasn't able to leave the house without full makeup and fully done hair. Sometimes I woke up late on a weekend, and my family wanted to go to breakfast, and they were loading into the car in two minutes, and still I made them wait so I could get all dolled up for this quick and inconsequential outing. 

Whether I liked getting ready at this capacity seemed out of the question. Sometimes I messed with my own limits, like wearing sweats with fully curled hair, but ultimately you’d find me in front of my mirror each day, putting on concealer and eyeshadow and eyeliner and mascara, straightening and ratting my hair. Weirdly often, I’d wake up in the middle of the night, sleep-walk into my bathroom, and begin heating the curling iron. After a few minutes, I’d look around at my too-dark bedroom and realize my alarm had never actually gone off. Getting ready for the day had become so mechanical I could do it in my sleep.

Moving across the country to Washington, DC cured me, in a way. I felt overdressed and overly made-up in my grad school classes, which were full of people from all over the country who all had their own views on beauty. Many women around me went completely makeup-less all the time. I admired their seemingly unbothered attitude about it all, and I wanted to feel the same way. At this point, my morning routine really only involved putting on mascara and filling in my eyebrows—which is still my routine to this day—but I wanted to take it a step further. 

I started going to the gym without makeup, and stopped worrying about my hair. In the humid DC weather, my hair didn’t last long when styled anyway. I still chose fun outfits, because picking outfits felt more self expressive to me than dressing up my face. But I just stopped worrying as much, and it felt really nice. 

All that said, I still struggle when it comes to leaving the house without getting ready. And I’ve found that it’s particularly hard to convince myself to leave when I’m working from home, stuck in a black hole of emails, sitting in the same pair of shorts I wear basically every day. It’s become too easy to isolate myself. The Covid lockdown made me feel like I was back in my pre-12-year-old brain—I wasn’t a physical thing anymore, so why bother decorating my form? Now, it can feel superfluous to get ready if my biggest outing is the grocery store, but I’ve also started to feel lazy and unproductive if I don’t get ready at all. 

I don’t foresee an end to working from home, so I’ve had to come up with strategies to make it easier to get myself out of the house and feel confident at the same time. I do still feel better if I get ready in some capacity—though it’s still up in the air whether that’s just me fulfilling some unspoken patriarchal agreement about being a woman in the world. 

But while I continue untangling all that, I’ve come up with a few ways to make sure I leave this apartment hell hole, because getting out, whether I’m ready or not, is the main goal. I’ll often leave for long walks in the mornings wearing workout clothes and not worrying one bit about makeup and hair. But for everything else, I’m less likely to leave—or leave on time—if I’m not able to conceive of an outfit, as the decision fatigue from work looms over me at all times. So below, I’ve put together a few ideas I incorporate into my morning routine that help me get out the door, decision fatigue and laziness be damned.

1. Wear one article of clothing while working from home that can easily transition to a going-out outfit later.

The less physical effort I put into getting dressed, the better. (Especially in the summer when I’m constantly sweaty!) If I’m already wearing a top I love, it’ll be easier to throw on some different (less revealing, more socially appropriate) bottoms and move on with my life. Here are a few examples of when this has worked well for me. 

Tank: Everlane (similar here). Skirt: Depop, but originally UO (same style here). Sandals: Nordstrom Rack (other colors here).

T-shirt: 730DC. Jeans: Madewell (mine are the curvy perfect vintage style). Sandals: Nordstrom Rack (other colors here).

2. Put on that one non-negotiable makeup product before you even start working from home/parenting/whatever you’re up to.

For me, it’s my eyebrows. I, not uniquely, feel I look like an alien without filling in my brows—and while I wish I could get over that mental block, it’s also not that hard to fill them before starting my work day. Then, for any unexpected Zoom meetings or errands (I’m always out of milk these days?!) I don’t get in my head about showing my face. At least I’m somewhat ready to go, in whatever small way I need to feel comfortable. 

3. Create a uniform.

I’ve seen a lot of people curating “summer uniforms” lately, and I don’t think it’s a bad idea. There’s really only so much you can do when you want to wear as little as possible, so why not just keep an outfit template in mind for days you feel stuck? For me, it’s an good ol’ top with a good ol’ skirt. I’ve got a lot of these pieces to mix and match, so I will. All summer long. 

Outfit #1—Tank: Madewell. Skirt: Depop, originally Madewell (same style here). Sandals: Nordstrom Rack (other colors here). Outfit #2: Vest: Anthropologie (same style here). Skirt: Roolee (similar here). Boots: Free People (similar here). Outfit #3: Shirt: Forever 21 (similar here). Skirt: Madewell. Sandals: Nordstrom Rack (other colors here).

4. Repeat outfits.

We’re done caring about repeating outfits. In fact, outfit repetition was one thing that bothered me when I started posting outfits on my Instagram—now that there was photographic evidence of what I wore, I felt like I needed to switch it up, even when I normally couldn’t care less about wearing the same shirt twice in a row. Find some staple pieces that really feel like you, the ones you reach for all the time, and see what fun ways you can keep styling them—even if it’s the same exact outfit as the day before. If it makes getting dressed an easy and enjoyable task, just do it. I’m for sure going to repeat the outfit above, where I wore a plaid shirt with a plaid skirt. The pieces were bought a decade apart, but they have the same color palette! A dream come true for when my maximalism heart comes out to play.

Sorry for all my complaints about summer. But fair warning: the complaints won’t go away until after my birthday (September 22), when I assume it will start to feel like fall, but still doesn’t.

Continuously untangling,

Abi