Clothing

Times like this
Great Heav­en knows
We wish we had
Not so many clothes

I have too many clothes, and still not enough to wear.

I’m doing laun­dry this morn­ing, and it’s been two weeks since my last trip to the laun­dro­mat. I’ve gone longer than that before, but it was­n’t pret­ty. This time I had to get pret­ty cre­ative too.

I’d like to get rid of all the stuff that I have that does­n’t fit or that I don’t need. for that I need to know how many arti­cles of cloth­ing I need. I think I should do laun­dry once a week, so the­o­ret­i­cal­ly that means i should own sev­en of every­thing. Right? Well, of course not. I don’t wear the same thing every day, and I don’t want to wear the same thing every day.

I’m becom­ing aware that I’ve col­lect­ed cloth­ing to allow me to blend in, chameleon-like, to a vari­ety of sit­u­a­tion. I can wear my torn jeans or get my suit out. i always dress appro­pri­ate to what I think oth­ers expect of me. I saw a bill­board with a guy wear­ing a v‑neck sweater and a white t‑shirt show­ing under­neath, and com­ment­ed on what an annoy­ing look that is and the woman I was dat­ing at the time said, “no! that’s a great look!” so I went out and bought one.

Not to be unmind­ful of the need to dress appro­pri­ate­ly for dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, I think it’s time that I make con­scious deci­sions about how I’m going to dress for myself.

I don’t wear ties to work, but I do like to wear shirts. I mean oxfords or anoth­er but­ton-down. I like to wear oxfords at play too, but some­times I like to wear short-sleeved trop­i­cal print shirts or t‑shirts. Actu­al­ly, t‑shirts as a stand­alone cloth­ing item have been dis­ap­pear­ing from my dress­ing habits of late.

So here’s a first stab at what I need to own to have “enough” clothing.

• 3 white long-sleeved but­ton-down col­lared shirts
• 3 sol­id col­ored long-sleeved but­ton-down col­lared shirts
• 3 trop­i­cal print pat­terned short-sleeved but­ton-down col­lared shirts
• 2 sweaters
• 4 pairs dress slacks
• 2 pairs khakis/casual slacks
• 2 pairs jeans
• 2 pairs car­go shorts
• 3 white t‑shirts
• 3 white tank tees
• 3 sol­id dark t‑shirts
• 3 sol­id dark pock­et tees
• 3 sol­id dark tank tees
• 3 band/logo tees
• 6 pair boxers
• 3 pair briefs
• black shoes
• brown shoes
• run­ning shoes

Seems like a lot of t‑shirts, actu­al­ly. But I know I’ve prob­a­bly got at least three times as many as that. Arrgh.