this week's adventures in motherhood: getting my heart in the right place.

I have a confession to make: I have a secret resolution I've been working on this year.

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I am a clothes (and shoes, and bags...) fanatic. And I definitely have champagne taste on a beer water budget, though most of the time I reign myself in and stick to the sale racks (it's a good thing Anthropologie is a 45 minute drive away, though). I get a secret (okay, not-so-secret) thrill any time the person behind me in the checkout line at the grocery store taps me on the shoulder to say "I love your coat!" or when a student would hang back after class to ask me where I got my shoes or when a very flamboyant waiter at my favorite restaurant told me my skirt looked fierce. As much as we pretend it doesn't matter, your appearance is a big part of how people judge you -- and I admit that looking a certain way is a lot more important to me than it probably should be.

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But I heard a quote recently that stopped me in my tracks: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." I guess I always sort of thought it was the other way around -- that your heart would be the one tell you where to put your money, time, and effort. Instead, I started really thinking about where I was putting my treasure, and what it meant about how my priorities and values had shifted accordingly. And is that really the kind of message I want to be sending my daughter about how to live your best life (really, Oprah, you aren't the only one who has ever used that phrase)? Total lightbulb moment.

So.

I stopped buying clothes this year. All year. (Okay, I did buy a dress for my brother's wedding. For 70% off the original price. And c'mon, it's a once-in-a-lifetime event, right?) Because there will always be cute clothes in stores, so taking a year off from buying them isn't going to prevent me from ever looking stylish again. Plus, this is a chance for me to really take stock of what I already own, decide what's "me," what's old and tired, and start making better use of the items I've already poured my hard-earned cash into.

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And that gives me some more spending money for the things that really do make my heart happy -- like buying all organic produce to keep my little family of three healthy, supporting independent bookstores and new authors, donating to causes that matter to me, and planning trips to visit people and places that will last a lot longer in my bank of memories than something on a hanger in my closet.

Does this mean I have to change the tag line for my blog? Or shut down my Pinterest board? For now, I'm saying no -- I still adore fashion, and I'm not going to pretend that I'll never care about clothes again, because this is just part of who I am. But my commitment to being a great mom to L means realizing that I need to be a lot more conscious of my decision-making on the big stuff and the small stuff, too.

p.s. Have any of you read this? Or heard about this? I don't think I can go that far -- but a girl can dream...