My New Year's resolution for 2010 is, drum roll please, to stop buying clothes at Wal-Mart. Now don't get upset with me, I like Wal-Mart clothes. No, actually, I love them. I love them beyond all reason. I may not need a bedazzled sweatshirt that says 'QT Pie,' but for $4.99, why wouldn't I buy it? Who could walk away from a deal like that? I mean it's a sweatshirt, for less than 5 bucks!

My life for the last six years has been a constant cycle of feeding babies, burping babies, changing diapers, wiping snotty noses, breaking up fights, cooking, cleaning, dropping off and picking up kids and other glamorous pastimes that I really don't want to rub in your face. Everybody can't handle the Mommy high life. Because of my extremely chic lifestyle, I end up in sweatpants and a T-shirt most days. For the past six years, it has been pointless to pay more than $4.99 for a shirt.

I mean, would you pay $25 for a T-shirt at Banana Republic if you knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that within the first 24 hours, someone was going to pee, puke or poop on you? I've taken off one too many shirts at night to find that someone had puked over my shoulder and down my back without me knowing it. And, yes, that I had been to the grocery store, the pediatrician and God only knows where else with dried vomit all down my back.

So I took a brief, six-year hiatus from clothing shopping anywhere that didn't have shopping carts and preferably a snack bar. (It's much easier to try on clothes if your kids are trapped in a buggy eating popcorn or fighting over a foot-long hotdog.)

So this is the year.

In 2010 I will just say no to bedazzled sweatshirts, and $4 purple yoga pants that say Juiceee across the butt. It's going to be hard, seeing as how I just moved to Smalltown, Mississippi and the closest mall is a two hour drive away. But I'm determined and I'll be strong. (Unless I get a recommendation from a friend, because my friend Kasey told me Wal-Mart has corduroy pants on sale for $10 and they look and fit just like the ones from JCrew. And if I find them I plan to buy them in every color available. ($10 people!) But that's it and I mean it.

No more Wal-Mart clothes for me. I will stick to the grocery store and will not even browse through the ridiculously low priced sleep wear and mix and match bathing suits.

I can do this. Luckily for me there is a JC Penny right down the street, so if I really get a hankering for some low-dollar high-fashion, I have an out.

(Robin O'Bryant is a former Mount Pleasant resident and mother of three. Read her blog online at www.robinschicks.com.

 or e-mail her, zebandrobin@hotmail.com.)