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# Sweater Weather
- URL: https://www.jarviscoffin.com/othermusings/sweater-weather/
- Published: 2026-09-22T15:54:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-22T15:54:30.000Z
- Author: Jarvis Coffin
- Tags: Other Musings, fall

Suddenly, it’s sweater weather, that marvelous time of year when the shirt from yesterday or the day before will work just as well hidden underneath the extra layer of clothing. Throw a sweater on over the T-shirt and you are dressed for success.

My sweaters live on a shelf in my closet. There is no room for them in the two old bureaus I have for the rest of my clothes, which have roles assigned to them by the wardrobe police—summer clothing drawers, and winter clothing drawers, each of them sorted top to bottom beginning with socks, then to shirts, and finally, trousers and jeans. Most everybody does it this way, I guess. Smaller drawers seem always to be at the top, larger ones at the bottom. Why? I submit socks ought to be closer to where the feet are, and I would be glad not to always have to dig around the bottom drawer for the bulkier khakis and jeans, bearing in mind that pulling out one pair frequently results in one or two others tumbling onto the floor behind them.

I have acknowledged in this space before that I have more articles of clothing than I need because I hold on to them. Tattered shirts and sweaters I have had for years that I might have been wearing on the first date with my wife, or at the hospital the night the baby was born. Getting rid of them feels like abandoning a pet alongside the road.

So, the sweaters live on a shelf in the closet. As of the end of last season, per the wardrobe police, they were neatly folded and ordered by weight and fabric (cotton, wool, llama, recycled roofing shingles . . . I’m never sure what they’re made of) into stacks, side by side. But now, within only hours of sweater season arriving, the orderly stacks are a jumble, cottons already finding their way onto wools, sleeves untucked and dangling down to where they risk being hooked by wire hangers.

Frustrated and late for an appointment, I made an illegal U-turn once in downtown Stamford, Connecticut, turning around in front of a police car idling on the side of the street. I was distracted. He was sitting right there. He didn’t even have to pull out in pursuit. Simply flashed his lights and stepped out of the car, collected my license and registration, checked on my driving record, and came back to the window.

“Gotta pencil?”

“Pencil, Officer?”

“I want you to write 100 times, ‘I will never be stupid enough again to make an illegal U-turn in front of a police car.’”

I am already bracing for the wardrobe police who can never fathom why my sweater shelf is always in such disarray. What is required to choose a sweater, carefully remove it from the stack, and return it, folded, to a safe and orderly position on top? Why must the shelf of sweaters always appear as if cats have been living there?

I don’t know. It’s boring. I suppose it’s the same with removing trousers from the large bottom drawer of the bureau. My father, who spent some time in Korea with the Marines, used to say, “See the hill, take the hill,” interpreted often as “See the leaves, rake the leaves,” or “See the bed, make the bed.” I see the sweater, I take the sweater.

The wardrobe police use a step stool to gently and carefully remove and replace sweaters on their shelves. Granted, there is a lot to admire about their shelves, which could be open to the public as a curated fashion exhibit. Colorful, rational, detailed. Carefully and slowly crafted. A picture.

And one reason I’m always left waiting in the car.

Happy first day of fall.