For twenty years I changed out of my clothes the minute I got home. At 55, I found out it was never my body.

Here is a thing I did every single day for twenty years, and never once thought about.

Come home. Bag down, kettle on, and then straight to the bedroom to take off whatever I’d put on that morning. Trousers off, into the soft ones. Every day. Five o’clock, like a shift change.

Three weeks ago I looked at the clock at ten past ten in the evening and realised I was still wearing what I’d chosen at eight that morning. I hadn’t changed. I hadn’t wanted to.

That’s the whole story, really. But let me explain why it took me until 55.

If you’re somewhere near my age, I suspect you own two wardrobes in one cupboard.

There are the clothes for being seen in: the trousers with the proper waistband, the blouse that needs a good iron. And there are the clothes for actually living in, which nobody outside the house ever sees, because you’d be mortified.

The tell was always the waistband. That thin red line across your middle at the end of the day, the one you catch in the bathroom mirror and think nothing of because it’s been there for two decades. Add a Brisbane summer and a fitted blouse and by three in the afternoon I’d be counting down to the shift change.

And the mornings were their own small misery: standing in front of it all at eight o’clock, trying to work out what went with what.

I assumed both of those were simply mine to live with. They weren’t — and the person who showed me was a complete stranger.

I found the answer sitting in a specialist’s waiting room in the city, which is not where I expected to do any shopping.

A woman across from me, about my age, was wearing the most easy-looking outfit I’d seen in years. Loose top with those wide, draped sleeves, and trousers that fell straight and wide from the waist. She looked cool in every sense of the word. I was fanning myself with a magazine.

I did something I’ve never done before and asked her where it was from. She laughed and said her daughter had ordered it for her, and that she’d been wearing it three times a week since. Then she told me the part that got me: it came as a set. The top and the trousers, together, already matched.

It’s called the Maribel, from Wattle & Reed. I’ll admit my first thought about a top-and-trousers set was that it sounded like something you’d wear to the letterbox and no further. It’s the opposite. It reads as an outfit precisely because the two pieces were designed together — which is also why it quietly fixes two separate problems I’d never connected.

The first is the waistband. There isn’t one, not in the old sense — the wide-leg trousers sit on an elastic band and then fall away from you in a straight, fluid line. Nothing grips. Nothing marks. The fabric has a light, breathable texture, which in this climate is the difference between wearing clothes and surviving them. The batwing sleeves do the same job up top: loose and airy, so the shape comes from the drape rather than from you.

The second problem is the eight o’clock puzzle, and this is the bit I hadn’t expected. Because it’s a set, there is no puzzle. The two pieces are made to go together, so getting dressed stops being a decision. You put on the top. You put on the trousers. You’re done, and you look deliberate.

Nothing to unfasten. Nothing to decide. I’ve since realised those two nothings were most of what I’d been changing out of at five o’clock.

The first week, I kept catching myself. I’d get home, walk towards the bedroom out of pure habit, and then not have anything to change into that was more comfortable than what I already had on.

Mark noticed before I did. Asked whether I’d been out somewhere, because I was cooking dinner in what he assumed were going-out clothes. I hadn’t been anywhere. I’d just stopped changing.

And then that evening: ten past ten, kitchen tidied, still dressed, perfectly comfortable. Twenty years of a five o’clock shift change, quietly cancelled.

One. It was never my body. It was the waistband. Twenty years of assuming I needed to change at five, when what I needed was trousers that didn’t fasten.

Two. A set removes a decision, and decisions are what mornings cost. Two pieces made for each other is worth more than four pieces that nearly go.

Three. They come apart. The trousers go with a plain tee for the shops; the top goes over jeans for dinner. I bought one outfit and got about five.

For balance — my old eight-o’clock routine, next to the new one.

You can’t try it on first — Wattle & Reed sell online only. It’s listed at $299.95 and currently sells for $89.95. And yes, you’re reading a page that would like to sell you one — weigh that as you should.

Here’s the sum anyway. It isn’t one garment, it’s two, and they separate: worn the way I wear them — together, and each with other things — that’s about five outfits, which comes to under twenty dollars an outfit. There’s free delivery across Australia and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so a wrong size goes back. It comes in seven colours and in sizes S through 5XL, which is a wider range than most places bother with, and mattered to me more than I’d admit in company.

Mine is the black. The navy came a fortnight later, and I’ve stopped pretending there won’t be a third.

My friend Denise asked me last week what had changed, because apparently I look like I’ve been on holiday. Nothing has changed. I’m simply not counting down to five o’clock anymore.

If you have a pair of soft trousers waiting for you at the end of every day — the ones nobody sees — I’d gently suggest the problem was never your body or your willpower. It was the clothes. Twenty years of blaming the wrong thing.

The soft trousers are still in the drawer, for what it’s worth. They just don’t come out at five anymore.