Frugal Friday’s Workwear Report: Cap-Sleeve Side-Ruched T-Shirt

55 Comments

1. I want to wear heels to a wedding in a few months, but I’m really out of practice. Can anyone recommend a good pair of heeled sandals that will give me a little bit of height but not kill me if I try to wear them for 4 or 5 hours? TIA!

   1. Try looking at the comfort brands first (Kork-Ease, Naturalizer, Sofft, SAS Shoes). Heels can actually be nice for arch support if the shoe is otherwise comfortable.

   2. You’ll have to look at current models to see what you like the looks of, but over the years I’ve found plenty of this kind of shoe from Dansko and Rockport. I almost never wear heels, but I find it much easier to find comfortable heeled sandals than regular heels (or most other dress shoes without laces) because they usually have lots of straps that keep your feet from sliding around. My feet always just come right out of pumps and flats, no matter how many heel pads or whatever I use.

   3. I do best with things that aren’t kitten heel and aren’t 2 inches-sometimes too short is actually less comfortable because of the arch of the foot. Depending on how formal, an espadrille can sometimes be more comfortable. I second the comment about more coverage and less sliding around. My go-tos at conferences since my feet are usually killing me are Naturalizer, Hush Puppies and vionic. Or, a pointy flat if it’s truly too tough.

   4. I wear Sarah Flint heeled sandals to weddings.

2. Hey, I have a quick etiquette question. Our cleaning ladies accidentally broke our stove last week, and I was wondering if it’s okay to leave a little note for them. I’d like to politely ask them to be gentle with the stove and to avoid rearranging the shower bottles, since they tend to move everything around every time they come (I think they’re taking down all the stuff from the wire corner tower).

   I know it’s probably better to just talk to them directly, but the cleaning company is made up of about six young women, and the same ones don’t always come every time. Sometimes different people handle different areas — one does the upstairs, another the kitchen—so leaving a card every couple of weeks might be the easiest way to drop a quick reminder. Do you think that’s rude or okay?

   1. I think leaving a note comes across a little passive-aggressive. Is there a head person you could talk to about the stove? Or you could you talk to one person and ask them to share with others?
      They probably have to move the shower bottles to clean the shower and I think asking them to be put back in the exact same order is a little high maintenance, so I would be inclined to let that part go.

      1. Agree that it’s annoying to ask that they put them back the same way so I think I’m just going to ask them to skip it. How often does the corner of the shower need to be cleaned anyway?

         1. The corner of the shower is the soap scummiest part in our house.

   2. I have occasionally left notes for the cleaning crew before and never considered it passive-aggressive: We never saw one another face to face. In the alternative, you can call the company and ask whoever answers the phone to relay the message to whoever comes to your house.

      I do agree that the shower bottle thing isn’t a hill to die on.

   3. If they don’t move the shower bottles, they can’t clean the area. I’d leave that alone but call about the stove and leave any special instructions.

   4. If they broke something I’d let the head person know in writing. Even if you aren’t asking for any reimbursement, they need to know to talk to whoever was there. Leaving a note doesn’t solve that issue.

      For the shower, I’d probably just move everything out myself the day of before they come so they can clean it.

      1. If my cleaning company broke my stove I would absolutely ask for reimbursement. Stoves are expensive and also hard to break?

         1. It depends what they broke. I recently busted the knob of mine accidentally, it was a $25 part I just ordered online and took 2 minutes to swap. If it was something like that I wouldn’t bother with reimbursement, but something expensive/difficult to fix like the glass, yes.

            1. Oh yes, agreed. But if they busted a knob I would not say that they had “broken the stove” that seems like hyperbole. but maybe that’s what OP meant.

   5. This reminds me of my parent’s lovely cleaning lady, who understood very little English. She did a very good job, but sometimes would do surprising things. Like she cleaned the refrigerator by taking everything out of it, cleaning the fridge, and then putting everything back in the refrigerator randomly. She did the same thing with my mother’s bookcases – an entire wall filled with bookcases and books. She took all the books out, cleaned, then put them all back in random order.

      My mother cried a little.

3. Someone please tell me I’m being ridiculous. I am part of a large, but local women’s group whose main goal is service to charities and social activities (made up mostly by women whose husbands earn so much so that the women can engage in philanthropic endeavors), and someone who is a member of that group lost their home in a fire recently. The heads of the group sent out a gofundme asking people to support this family, any amount helps, etc. I have met the member a couple of times at group events but never one on one. When I received the gofundme request, I asked DH if we could give and I could sense his hesitancy. I think it’s because the family that lost their home is wealthy, which you would know from their jobs/professions but also I’ve seen the house and it is a showcase home with water views, etc. In other words, they don’t need our money, it’s just a nominal show of support. The donors before me were giving anywhere between $50 and $200. DH said I can give $50, but I told him I will give $100. After I gave, I saw that just about everyone in the group who donated after me gave $200-$500. I am feeling embarrassed that I gave so little now that I see everyone else is being so generous! I am sort of mad at DH even though I should have just given and not discussed it with him. Has anyone experienced this weird type of regret? I know I should just move on but I’m kicking myself.

   1. yup, all this sounds a bit ridiculous. They are wealthy. Their house will be insured. Losing everything is of course devastating whether you have money or not. But your $50-100 donation is not going to get them back kids photos and other memorabilia. You participated in the performance of showing support. It sounds like you are not in the same financial bracket as these other families, but you would like to pretend that you are?

      1. +1. You participated in the symbolic gesture and that’s what counts. My husband’s office had a GoFundMe for a coworker who was grievously ill (and later died, unfortunately) and the donations ranged from $10 to $2000.

      2. No, I don’t have the same lifestyle because I work full-time in a demanding job (and most of these women do volunteer work and are otherwise SAHMs). That said, do I want to “pretend” I am in their “financial bracket”? I’m not sure. That’s giving me food for thought. I would much rather have a career and use those degrees I worked for then be dependent entirely on DH, but I have always felt weird about my participation in this group, whether I’m wearing the right thing, etc. The members are all really nice people and I think these are just my own hang-ups not having grown up wealthy.

   2. I don’t think you should compare yourself to other donors or feel embarassed that your donation was smaller. That said, I don’t really agree with your Dh’s framing that donation isn’t necessary because the people are wealthy. You give to show emotional support. But a donation doesn’t have to be huge to do that. I probably would have given $100 also. $500 for this kind of thing is really not in our budget, and we’re pretty well off.

      1. I agree that the giving is to show support. I sympathize with DH a little more because in my world there are always so many fundraisers for people who need the money a lot more who I know just as well (met a couple of times level).

   3. I don’t understand why there is a GoFundMe? This is what insurance is for and surely their house was insured.

      1. +1

      2. Agreed, I haaaate this gofundme culture we’re living in. If insurance were widely available (or in the case of medical expenses, universal healthcare were a thing) we wouldn’t need to crowdsource basic necessities. To be clear I hate this *for us* not that I hate people who do it.

         That said, I think it’s a little crass when rich people crowdsource at all. I agree that this is devastating no matter your financial bracket, but come on guys, you’re rich! This is just overage for them which feels pretty sick.

         1. I don’t give to every fundraiser that comes my way, so it does feels weird to have to choose.

            When somebody’s house burns down there can be a lot of expenses insurance doesn’t cover, and people know this and want to offer help. So I do get it. It is also just tragic and traumatizing, and people want a way to show up.

            So often I’m also seeing the person whose household pet needs a curative treatment that happens to be costly, and the person who was in that horrific accident while underinsured, and the person who is homebound until they can purchase a vehicle that accommodates their wheelchair, and the person who is missing shifts while their kid is in the hospital as the bills pile up, and so on.

            1. None of this describes OP’s rich acquaintence.

            2. That’s my point though; if I’m already picking and choosing, it’s feels awkward to choose the person who seems to need support in the form of $ the least.

   4. Agree to just move on. This kind of charitable keeping up with the Joneses is exhaustingly silly.

      And being sort of mad with your DH is genuinely ridiculous — because he didn’t agree wholeheartedly? Because you gave less because you sensed his hesitancy, and now you feel like you look less generous than others?

      Move on, in every possible way.

      1. Thank you. I needed to hear this. I am not going to check the gofundme again.

   5. Please donate to a charity for people who actually need monetary help and then you will realize how silly this “conflict” is.

      1. Soak the rich, am I right?? They can’t have feelings or suffer any loss.

         1. They can have feelings but they don’t deserve charity

            1. Give me a break.

         2. Oh, for the love. Come on.

         3. It’s sad that you think the way to support a devastated friend who is sad and has suffered a loss is by paying her.

            People set up go fund mes to pay for expenses that would financially cripple them if they had to go it alone. The fact that it’s morphed into a ritual to show support even to people who don’t need money is pretty wild and a sad commentary on the capitalist capture of our culture.

            Money is not care, it is not love, it is not solidarity. Money is money, for buying things. If you need money, you ask for money. If you need emotional support you… ask for money? Wild.

            1. As someone who has had to make a GoFundMe for medical bills, making a GoFundMe when you’re not facing bankruptcy or homelessness seems… tacky? crass? tone-deaf? I’m not sure of the right words. Like, GoFundMe is the classier version of begging, and it’s something you do when you’re desperate. Are they unaware of this or just pretending to be desperate and poor? Certainly leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

   6. I feel like people who list their names on charitable contributions are just doing it to keep up with the Joneses, I always go anonymous.

      You know they’re wealthy, you don’t know the person 1:1, I think the fact that you thought of them at all is lovely. I gave $150 a few years ago where a friend from an alumni group had a house that burned down in wildfires but I’d hung out with her a few times.

      1. My thoughts too. I always go anonymous.

      2. Yup I always donate anonymously.

   7. That’s crazy, insurance covers a hotel, clothes, and rebuilding. Your $100 is fine.

4. I know it’ll be quiet today but I wanted to share a good and interesting op-ed in my local paper about the loopholes in CA’s school smartphone “ban” laws. I thought it was harsh but powerful and right in line with the trends I’m seeing locally – that both students and parents want to do more to fight against this scourge, or as the article says, this period where we watch “childhood and adolescence shrivel into a joyless, screen-addicted malaise because Big Tech decided that sucking the lives of kids through their eyeballs is great for business.”

   https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/phone-ban-school-california-22319344.php

   “In what other policy area would we figure out that a product makes kids anxious, depressed and even suicidal; it trashes their sleep, academics, eye and spine health, and intellectual curiosity; it gives them access to porn; it allows them to take explicit images of themselves, which girls more than boys see circulated without their consent — in what other policy area would we look at this and say, “Oh, yes, let’s cut back to half a pack a day”?

   This is not a moral panic, and it’s not Luddites telling children to get off our lawn. The most lucrative consumer product ever released is being paid for by the dismembering of children’s interior lives — low-income children disproportionately.

   Everybody understands how bad phones are, but parents are reluctant to withhold them because it would isolate kids from “the conversation” happening online. Their child’s phone use worries them, but taking it away could ostracize their kid.

   Yet guess who is at the forefront of banning smartphones for kids? Yes, it’s tech CEOs! Remember the old tobacco executives who quipped, “We don’t smoke the s—, we just sell it”? Well, they’re back!

   The key insight I get from my students, who are remarkably self-aware and candid about the state of smartphone addiction, is that the only way to make giving up smartphones palatable is for everyone to take the jump at once.”

5. What are the best sources for Taylor Swift wedding updates? I have never been sucked into celebrity life like this before, but I have some heavy things happening in my personal life and could use some distraction / joy.

   1. I track the pop apologists.

   2. TMZ has livestream outside of MSG

6. Today’s frustration: ordered a new laptop from Costco. The guy who delivered it left a busted-up looking package sitting on teh floor of the open garage… unbeknownst to him right where I throw packages I have discarded. Anyway: my husband drove over the package thinking it was an empty box and haha no it’s my $1200 new laptop.

   Amazingly nothing seems to be cracked — we’re trying to charge it and turn it on right now. We took pictures of the busted package and staged a photo to recreate where it had been left on the floor of the garage. Anything else we should do? I have 90 days to return.

   1. Just return and exchange. Costco has a great policy

      1. This. For sure.

      2. No. You broke it. You don’t exchange something that you broke…claim it on your house insurance.

   2. You break it, you buy it.

      I mean, he saw the box and chose to drive over it.

      1. Seriously. Take some responsibility!

      2. Right?? Does he also drive through piles of leaves at the curb, and water over the road after a storm?

7. Any favorite summer hats that pack well? Would love something cool and chic.

   Large brim preferred. As much face protection as I can get.

   1. I like hats from San Diego Hat Company.
      I also had a Lanikai cotton sun hat from Scala that lasted me at least ten years and I loved, but it is for sure heavier than straw.
      I would love a hat from Hats in the Belfry but that’s not in my budget.

   2. Wallaroo and they are having a sale.

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