How to Get Away with Wearing Pajamas to Work

Being required to wear uncomfortable clothes outside of the house is one of the unfortunate certainties of adult life. I curse every day that I am required to wear a bulky underwire bra out of the house. I am filled with rage when I remember the moments in college when I just rolled out of bed and ran to class in leggings. My ultimate quest in life is to avoid discomfort in my job where I spend nine hours a day sitting at a desk. Luckily, I think I might have solved it. Here's how I get away with wearing pajamas out of the house.

I work at a company that sells intimates, sleepwear, and apparel. In my daily work of writing about underwear and pajamas, I have learned one vital secret that has changed the way I dress: since a lot of nice sleepwear looks a lot like normal clothing anyway, what's to stop me from just wearing my pajamas to work?

That's the real thing that the apparel industry is hiding from you. You don't have to wear an itchy dress or a confining button up all day. Just wear expensive sleepwear and style it so that no one will know. Nothing is stopping you. Adorable items of lingerie or sleepwear pass by my desk all day and at first I would think "damn, I wish this was a normal top so that I could get away with wearing it out..." But now I know. It is a normal top. The only thing that is stopping you is the label. And no one else will see the label inside your pajamas except you. So do what you want.

The pants in this look are 100% pajama pants. It's part of the "Embroidered Knit Pajama Set" that Madewell sold years ago. (I also found a way to wear the top, which you will see below.)

Since these pants are made from cotton, modal, and spandex, they are beyond comfy. I paired them with heels, a white cami with floral embroidery made by Cuddl Duds from HerRoom, where I work, and Madewell's Courier shirt, which I wore unbuttoned to try to tone down the sleepy vibes.

Nightgowns can be a tricky business, since I rarely see anyone other than elderly ladies buying them, but they really are one of the most underrated articles of clothing that we are... sleeping on (I'm sorry, I couldn't let that one just pass me by). This nightgown is from Mystique Intimates, and I also got it at HerRoom before it sold out (you can find something similar here and here). It has accents of white contrast stitching at the hem, cuffs, and neckline, so I killed two birds with one stone by cinching my waist with a white belt to tie it all together. The shoes are from Madewell's collab with Veja, and I think they added a fun detail with the star embroidery. All together, I think this outfit is beyond comfortable without looking too unprofessional.

Whenever something is sold as a "sleepshirt," just know that's a lie. It's a T-shirt dress, plain and simple. It's just a short nightgown. It's not something special or designed specifically for sleeping, it's just a really comfy T-shirt dress. This one is from Donna Karan Sleepwear, who you probably know as the "DK" behind "DKNY," and I've loved it since the moment it came by my desk and was just searching for a reason to buy it (yes I wrote the copy for this so read closely).

Since I have a long torso and short legs, I think I got away without it being too short. The trick is to always check if there is a side seam measurement, and if there is, take a tape measure to see where that side seam would end on you. The side seam on this is almost 25" long, so I held the tape measure under my armpit and saw that 25" would hit mid thigh before I bought it. Always check the measurements before you buy.

I paired this with the same heels from outfit #1 (from Target, they have the same vibes as those expensive Steve Madden ones that everyone seems to own) and sheer black socks for that super cool socks-with-sandals look that according to Cosmo, is coming back into style. My purse looks like a cat, and yes it is very cute, and it added a little spunk to the outfit. This dress is mainly modal, so super comfy, and a win win win for me.

This top is the matching top of the Madewell Starry pajama set from earlier. Pajama sets are the easiest way to start making sleepwear part of your everyday look. Since they often come with a button up, you can ease into it by wearing that as a top, and just wearing the pants around the house. That's how I got away with it at first. No one is going to think "oh damn, that shirt with all of the buttons must be pajamas" and by the time they figure it out, it's too late. My office allows jeans, so I usually wear this look with a pair of blue skinnies, plus a belt and mules from Steve Edelman that I thrifted. I topped it off with a red lip to even further my assertion that these are not pajamas, and voila! An office appropriate look!

Kate Spade New York has some of my absolute favorite pieces of sleepwear. This line for fall is one of my favorites and it's super cute and comfy. I got it from HerRoom, once again, because once it came to my rack I was obsessed. It's a super soft jersey, and once you open a few buttons, no one is going to guess it's a sleepshirt. I paired it with big hoops, a black scrunchie to match the print, and ankle boots. Leopard is beyond trendy, and with this, I don't have to squeeze myself into the party dresses I used to wear as a college freshman.

We've been sleeping on sleepwear. No only is it much comfier than a lot of normal clothes, but it will also give you that designer look without as high of a designer price. When someone compliments my outfit and I say "oh thanks, it's Kate Spade," or "oh thanks, it's by Donna Karan," I'm not even lying. Plus, I feel more relaxed than anyone, because I'm wearing pajamas to work. A truly wonderful discovery, I think.

Don't want to waste this baby around the house anyway.

How To Create Glam Decor with Old Magazines

Decor is expensive. Just beyond expensive. Every time I walk through Urban Outfitters or CB2, I die inside just knowing it would probably cost me a whole month's salary to make my apartment fit even slightly with their vibe. That's not going to happen. Here's how I made chic decor like this.

(Fun fact: I used a campaign for Marc Jacobs for this, and I showed this to the model, Primrose Archer, and she loved it so I have officially peaked)

These are the supplies I used:

• scraps from old magazines (we used to get tons of free magazines sent to my sorority house, and you can find a lot of free magazines at newsstands in a lot of very bougie malls)

• frames or canvases of any size (I recycled some ugly art I had gotten as a gift as well as a bulletin board that I didn't use anymore)

• Mod Podge

• scissors

• glue stick (optional)

It's a big cut and paste project. For all of my pieces I made a background of plain text from long form articles, which I thought was especially fun considering I'm a writer and a journalist. I chose fashion spreads that matched my color scheme and outfits that inspired me. I wanted it to be more about the fashion rather than looking like a weird shrine to models, so I covered the eyes on all of the figures with a block of text.

For each canvas, I cut out columns of text to line up as the background, making sure that I used blocks of texts that were the same size for each column so that it looked more like a continuous piece rather than being choppy.

I glued down the background first. In order to get a smooth piece without bubbles, I coated each piece in a thin layer of Mod Podge and flattened it out with the edge of an expired gift card (other recommended tools are popsicle sticks or the flat edge of a plastic knife).

I was aiming for simplicity, so I only did extra detailing on the largest collage. For the circle gradient, I cut out all of the large circles individually and used a hole puncher for the smallest ones. I sketched out the basic idea, coated the whole canvas in glue, and plunked the circles into that vague pattern. Toward the end I sprinkled the smaller pieces onto the glue to avoid going insane from the tedium. You can finish off your canvas with a fine coat of glue if you want, but if you're tired of having sticky fingers, you can stop here.

My favorite thing about this accent wall is that it is 100% unique. No one will ever have an identical piece because no one else spent hours coated in glue and chopping up magazines. It looks expensive but it was virtually free. That's my kind of style.

Managing Mental Health With Your Journal

I'm very open about my struggle with my mental health. I've dealt with depression for more than half of my life, and some days are easier than others. This post is all about the tools in my journal I've used to deal with mental health, either in tracking my mood fluctuations throughout the day or in distracting myself during a downward spiral. I'm a firm believer in using all of the tools I can to get through, no matter how small.

I was having a shaky episode this weekend. I needed to distract myself from going off the proverbial deep end, or from catastrophizing, as I am wont to do. I needed to do something other than scroll through social media and panic, but I was in such a state that I couldn't focus on any actual activities. So, I made this spread.

I drew "anatomical" (in quotes as I am sure these are not really close to being anatomically correct) figures of the brain, heart, and ribs. To me they represent the constant battle of depression in sorting out the conflicting messages of what your illness tells you and what you know to be true. In the background, I scrawled the lyrics to Halsey songs (in particular from the album Badlands) until I calmed down. The repetitive action gave me something in which to channel my energy. The lyrics themselves captured a lot of what I was feeling. And my cramped, crabbed handwriting really fits the whole desperate and anxious vibe of this page.

In terms of actual managing my illness, I've found that a lot of traditional mood trackers don't work for me. Trackers like this or this track the mood by the day, but that's not as effective for me. Due to the nature of my illness, I have a lot of intense mood swings throughout the day, and it can be hard to choose just one overarching mood to capture the feeling of the whole day. I'm also about to meet with a new doctor to manage medications and moods, so I wanted to see if there was a pattern to my mood swings. I developed this tracker below to do exactly that.

Each color represents a mood. My code is very specific to me, meaning that I use pink and purple to represent the happier sides since pastels are some of my favorites. A lot of journalers put their colors within the theme of the month, but I don't find that to be productive. I've been using the same sort of colors since I started tracking my moods more than two years ago. I now associate them easier and thus can look at the tracker to know immediately what that day was like.

I go further that that, though. I have additional codes in the back that I use to track extenuating factors. For instance, I use a red dot next to the date to mark whether I have my period, since menstruating can at times affect your mood. I also use colored dots to track how many cups of coffee I have a day as well as how many glasses of alcohol that I might have, as studies have shown that they may affect mood. Other colored dots next to the date will represent any medication use or changes.

Some of the other trackers I use are much more specific to me, but it can be certainly helpful if you are trying to manage your moods and behaviors. I'll use certain patterns of dots, lines, or shapes over the moods in the bar themselves for certain behaviors. That way I can see if a behavior matches to a situation, a time, or a circumstance. A triangle over an area will represent impulsive behavior, like on Friday morning when I impulse spent even though I knew I shouldn't.

All of this likely seems like overkill. And it kind of is. If you don't suffer from mood swings or mood regulation, it might seem unnecessary to go this in depth with a tracker. That is probably why so many bujo bloggers just attach one mood to one day, since they won't experience the switches that someone like me might. But I am tired of being beholden to my moods. I want to get some sort of control, or at least understand why my mood is constantly in flux. This sort of tracker helps me to at least attempt to do that. Activities like this are part of why I think journaling can be so helpful, since it is entirely personalized. Your tracker doesn't have to look like mine, we can customize them to our own needs.