she doesn’t have to think about it.
I’ve never hosted a fancy dinner party, but the same principle applies to casual gatherings. At my house, one of the key reasons we’re comfortable having people over is that we know what we’re making, and we know it’s easy. My first signature dish was chicken Parmesan, but as I’ve gotten older, my go-to dishes have gotten simpler. These days, we love a good taco night for large crowds and street-cart chicken for smaller ones. Cozy winter nights call for pot roast in the Dutch oven. For a laid-back menu, we serve nachos (cheap) or sushi (splurge). For dessert, I rely on an almost-flourless chocolate cake I’ve made so many times I know the recipe by heart. If I want a sweet treat with a casual feel, I bake the Barefoot Contessa’s Outrageous Brownies, which are always a crowd-pleaser.
Having people over is a reliable way to deepen your relationships, but it can also feel daunting, simply because of the practicalities. Choosing a signature dish in advance gives you one less thing to think about, so you can trust that the food won’t be the obstacle to seeing friends.
Wear the Same Thing
When I was in high school, I envied my Catholic school friends who wore the same skirt, polo, and cardigan to school every day. When they rolled out of bed every morning they knew exactly what they would wear. To my high school self, that meant they could sleep for the extra fifteen minutes I spent choosing my outfit each morning. My friends’ tight parameters meant a streamlined decision-making process.
As I grew older, I became fascinated by people who not only choose to wear the same thing every day but do so explicitly because they want to make things easier for themselves. Even former President Obama, spurred by the research on decision fatigue, chose to wear only gray or blue suits while in office. “I’m trying to pare down decisions,” he told Michael Lewis in a Vanity Fair interview. “I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
It’s not just schoolgirls and the fashion-averse who employ uniforms. Many stylish people, including ones who work in the fashion industry, also embrace the personal uniform, which surprised me at first. Wouldn’t fashionable people relish getting dressed each day? But their reasoning makes sense—if you try to keep up with the trends, you could lose your mind, along with a whole lot of mental energy. As long ago as 1977, the late Carrie Donovan, who served as editor at Vogue and Harper’s, wrote, “The truly well-organized women have worked out a sort of ‘uniform’ way of putting themselves together attractively but efficiently.” For decades, she urged people to “develop a uniform for yourself that works.” Donovan’s own uniform involved all black, plus huge eyeglasses and bold accessories. Grace Coddington, who served as Vogue’s creative director for twenty-five years, also came to embrace wearing only black, saying, “I don’t want to think about what I’m wearing in the morning; I want to put all of my focus on the clothes I’m shooting. It’s like a uniform. You don’t have to make a decision about it. I spend my whole life making decisions.”
Though I admired people who boldly committed to a single daily uniform, I never thought I could be one of them. It felt too extreme for my tastes. But then one summer I noticed that I had accidentally fallen into a uniform of my own. Since I had to get dressed every day no matter what, I unconsciously made it easier for myself. Every day I wore a striped shirt (one of a dozen slightly different designs), neutral bottoms, and silver sandals. I loved it, because I rolled out of bed knowing exactly what I would wear that day: the next shirt hanging in my closet and whatever bottoms happened to be clean.
Even if you don’t wish to wear only striped shirts till the end of your days, a clothing matrix can serve the same function as a food matrix. Many of my own outfits are variations on a theme, like my oft-repeated “column” of a dark top with jeans, plus a pendant necklace. A less-drastic iteration is the “capsule wardrobe,” which has been popular in recent years, or the “ten-item wardrobe,” which Jennifer L. Scott unpacks in her delightful book Lessons from Madame Chic, in a chapter tellingly called “Liberate Yourself with the Ten-Item