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I’ve tracked every piece of clothing I’ve worn for three years
- wccrawford 6y agoHe gets less than 30 uses per shirt and considers that a good number? I wear a shirt that many times in a year, and they last many years. Granted, my shirts probably aren't as fancy as his and don't cost as much, but that's even more reason to be horrified.
- muro 6y agoIf you rotate through 20 shirts, wearing one for one day, you would wear each 36 times in 2 years. I think many t-shirts last about that long (or at least start to look quite worn at that time)
- 0xfaded 6y agoThis inspired me to do my math. I have 8 t-shirts in rotation, most 3-4 years old. Only one is unwearable without a sweater over the top (and yes, I still wear it).
- alisonkisk 6y agoNothing wrong with shirts looking quite worn on a regular workday if you aren't in sales.
- guitarlimeo 6y agoAgreed. Especially if you are wearing something on top of them (like a hoodie) most of the time.
- majewsky 6y agoMy daily wardrobe features a rotation of 15 T-shirts, paired with another rotation of longsleeves for cold seasons, all in plain generic colors to make it easy to match. My accounting data says I got those shirts in August 2018. I have worn one of these 15 T-shirts everyday since then (with very few exceptions, e.g. when formal wear was called for). Let's round that to 2.5 years, i.e. 912 days, i.e. about 60 wears per shirt. I'm not seeing any significant degradation on these shirts, so I can easily see myself wearing these at least another 3 years, which would be over 130 wears per shirt. For reference, this is the model I'm wearing right now: http://www.gildan.se/en/o61001-en-grey http://www.gildan.se/en/o61001-en-grey
- Pasorrijer 6y agoIt also depends on how you wear your clothes. Before Covid, I spent a significant amount of time on a plane, travelling, and flying around. Now I'm sitting at home. My same clothes are seeing significantly less wear with the lack of travel
- dopidop 6y agoVery good point. Pre Covid I was biking to work.
- t0mas88 6y agoSame here, lockdown saves clothes. And also means I'm wearing less formal clothes, somehow business dressing norms feel different via video call than in the client's office. At least with our banking clients which were always the most formally dressed once pre-lockdown.
- dopidop 6y agoI had the same reaction. Some t-shirt in my wardrobe have past the 5 year mark. I switched country around that time, so it’s easy to tell. They have been demoted of course. But the wear is fine as long as I don’t attend a wedding or a job interview.
- lottin 6y agoIt depends on the fabric too, for example oxford cloth shirts tend to last a long time, even though they aren't necessarily expensive. Linen shirts don't last nearly as much in my experience.
- iso1210 6y agoI've got 20 year old thinkgeek t-shirts that I've worn 100+ times, not exactly high quality.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- __s 6y agoAgreed. But I'll also keep wearing shoes with holes in their soles for a couple years
- guitarlimeo 6y agoI thought about this and it might be that he favors shirts with printed graphics on them. For me they start to show wear a lot faster than normal shirts (mainly because of the print fading) and tend to devolve into gym sweatshirts after 30 or so uses.
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. This is such a great discussion! I might have been unclear with what I consider what. In my categorization, shirts are button down shirts. https://hoverfalt.github.io/shirts.html https://hoverfalt.github.io/shirts.html They are part of my "uniform" if you like as a consultant. They tend to last 38-43 times. Then they start looking a little too worn for work. Shirts with print, for me, would fall under T-shirts and tanks. The few ones I have, definitely wear faster. My underwear shirts are the ones that tend to last 20-25 times. After that, they are no longer fresh. And I don't mean fresh as new, but rather unfresh to the extent of not being ok through a long day at work. Some, I continue using as sportswear also :)
- dgellow 6y agoHe's maybe sweating more than average. I had that issue when I was younger and wearing shirts, they would either start to have marks or smell I couldn't remove. That improved once I found the good type of fabric and type of deodorant for my personal use, but that takes some trial and error to find the correct combination. Just to say, each their own. The article is interesting on its own without people judging the author's habits.
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. I don't know in comparison to others, but I feel I really do sweat quite a bit. I guess this might cause significantly more wear than what might be considered normal. This is one reason I have had to find high quality fabrics so that they can take the constant washing and stay looking and feeling fresh. This is especially the case with underwear shirts, where I through trial and error have found the really good ones.
- alistairSH 6y agoBased on his shoe usage, brand choices, etc, I'm guessing he's more stylish than average and clothing is a hobby of sorts (he might not call it that, but it is). FWIW, like the author, I spend a small fortune on clothing/shoes, but I tend to wear items until they're threadbare. A few items here and there end up donated, but largely by the time I'm done with something, it goes into a rag pile for cleaning bicycles.
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. You guess sounds about right :) I actually also keep wearing many of the clothes until they are really worn out. The exception is work clothes, mainly button down shirts. In this context, I consider something divested when I no longer can wear it in its original intended context (e.g. work). I might continue use at my summer home or digging in the garden. And likewise, eventually if not donated they also end up in a rag pile for cleaning, or into the cotton recycling that fashion stores have to provide.
- ghaff 6y agoI don't know. Thinking about dress shirts like I wore when I was in a business casual office most days? I tended to rotate through my shirts every couple of weeks. And I think it would maybe be a couple of years before collars started to look a little rough around the edges and elbows were maybe starting to get a bit thin. So maybe 50 wears/washes. 30 might be a bit low but I'm pretty sure it wasn't 100. (Of course, they would have been wearable for much longer but really too ratty for the purpose.
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. These effects, logic and estimate were nearly exactly my hunch before I started collecting data. I though they should last at least to 50. I has rather surprised to find I had overestimated use quite a bit. And yes, mine would have been "wearable" too, only not at work anymore. I did keep wearing some of them in a rather casual way at my summer house for a while. But in that use, I considered them divested.
- sgmoore 6y agoWas also very surprised at this. The only thing I can estimate now are how long shoes last (almost every day for three years), but when I was growing up (several decades ago) I would only have one school uniform which would be worn every school day for a few years. It would have been my older brother's before me and my younger brother's after me. The number of times shorts would be worn would be in the high hundreds. I kinda have similar expectations now - for example, I have a t-shirt that I have been wearing about 20 or 30 times a year for the last twenty years. I'm hoping for another 20 years wear!
- shalmanese 6y agoI wish he would track washes as well. Washing is much harder on a shirt than wearing and shirts definitely don't need to be washed after every wearing.
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. That is a great point. My own case is such that I wash each shirt (button down shirt) and underwear shirt after every use. I have to. I guess my fast metabolism contributes. I tumble dry the underwear shirts but not the shirts. Washing certainly takes its toll. In my case, wear shows both "technically", as the fabric and details weakening, but also as a general decline in freshness. And i don't mean fresh-as-new, but rather pure whites turning yellowish. They become unfit for my work context. Some of this wear is from washing, some is from deterioration during long days at work. I also was my socks after each use. Here it would seem washing really is the main source of wear as it is very evenly spread.
- audiometry 6y agoYeah I read it as even undershirts getting as few as 25 wears before disposal. That number sounds crazy to me. I don’t track my usage but I estimate I have 15 which I wear 300 days a year and replace every 2 years? Hmm that implies roughly 40 wears each. That’s a much smaller difference than I originally expected....
- kleiba 6y agoWhy does anyone need six pairs of white sneakers? I have two pairs of shoes: one for the warm half of the year, and one for the cold/rainy half of the year (with a flexible definition of "half"). Then I have a pair of flip-flops and my "good Sunday shoes" which get dusted off very rarely when I have to wear a suit.
- jeanjogr 6y agoShoes last longer if they are not worn everyday.
- nocommonsense 6y agoYou're just repeating something you heard somewhere without any critical thinking. If you have 6x as many shoes each pair lasts 6x longer because you use each 1/6th as much. That's not beneficial in any way.
- alisonkisk 6y agoThere's no need for the nasty first sentence. The second sentence is fine.
- netrus 6y agoTo be fair, it has the benefit of having the choice between six pairs each morning (assuming they are not 100% identical). The disadvantage of course is that you might discard them earlier because fashion has moved on.
- sokoloff 6y agoI found that rotating among 2 or 3 pairs of sneakers, they never get smelly where daily worn shoes would within a 8-10 week span. In my case, 2-3 pair of shoes would last 10x as long in total.
- RBerenguel 6y agoLeather needs to dry and air thoroughly, for that it needs a whole day (overnight is not good enough). For a while, I was a bespoke shoemaker, so I know this first-hand from material experience and from knowledge passed by teachers and others.
- 0xfaded 6y agoWhen I lived in SF I didn't buy clothing except for socks and underwear. I only needed to visit a tech campus and I was stocked for the next year. I even have a pair of socks from Gusto I still wear. These days I live in Europe and getting desperate. Before Covid the occasional trip back to Cali allowed me to restock. I even went and BOUGHT clothes from Macy's. tldr; VAT and cultural norms make clothing disproportionately expensive.
- VBprogrammer 6y agoI'm sorry that this is being downvoted. I have a couple of t-shirts from tech companies myself. One from Stripe which is really nice but probably past its best and a cheap one from Cloudinary. I'm not sure if you are completely serious about never buying clothes, I've certainly never seen trousers on offer before but I'm convinced someone could get by on free t-shirts with little difficulty.
- ghaff 6y ago>couple of t-shirts :-) I normally go to a lot of events. Even without actively seeking them out, I end up with piles of t-shorts (which I do fairly regularly wear around home in the summer). I've given bags of them away but they still seem to accumulate over time. Very few of them are ones I've purchased. But, yeah, I've never seen a pair of pants as swag. That is something I have to periodically buy when they start getting ratty or stained.
- dgellow 6y agoDo I understand correctly that you would get pants from tech campus? That's new to me, I haven't seen this yet!
- bane 6y agoI've done the same lifehack for many years now and it's been extraordinarily helpful. On Jan 1st or 2nd, I rotate all of my hangers so the hook is backwards on the bar (I do something similar for shoes, folded pants, etc.). The next Jan 1st or 2nd, any clothes that are still in that position are given away. It means I made it through 4 seasons, and 52 weeks of work, play, social functions, hiking, yard work, house maintenance, and other events and never needed to call on those clothes. So off they go. The first year I did this I probably gave away about 60% of my wardrobe and never missed a single item I parted with -- a number of which still had the store tags on them. Even though this frees me up to purchase new clothes as I need them throughout the year without filling my closet up to the breaking point, I find that it puts a small routine in the back of my mind that makes me far more frugal with clothes and as a result I buy very little. If I really need some specialty clothing for something, it's usually a tuxedo or something I can probably rent or borrow. It's sort of a zero effort, self-documenting, positional tracking system.
- ghaff 6y agoI have way too much clothing even though I periodically give a bag or two away. The past nine months are obviously not typical but during normal times, I travel for maybe a third of the year and pack very lightly so I basically have a very compact set of travel specialty clothes. And most of the rest of the time I work from home. Plus I get a ton of swag given to me--t-shirts but also nice fleeces, jackets, etc. I do turn of it down but a lot I can't really do so and it is nice at the time. But how much can one realistically use. Just about the only thing I buy these days is underwear, socks, replacement shoes, and the odd article of either travel or outdoor-related clothing.
- mgr86 6y agoI wore very little of my winter clothes last year. We had a baby and I was only back to work for a few weeks before I started working from home. I think my son wears more outfits than my wife and I combined durning a normal week. Have you found you had more to give away this year?
- bane 6y ago
- roland35 6y agoI love the graphic on the article, it brings me back to playing solitaire on windows 95!
- probably_wrong 6y ago> The 90 euro Converse sneakers and the 30 euro Mywears have a similar CPW (...). In this case, money buys quality, at least when measured by durability. (...) The more expensive sneakers, the 150 euro Diesels, perform remarkably worse than the two aforementioned. (...) In this case, money does not seem to buy quality, at least not durability. This is the part that it's infuriating to me: I would willingly pay more if I knew which items are of good quality, but quite often there is no way to tell. One would assume that price is a proxy for quality, but (as seen here) this is rarely so: yes, the quality item is probably more expensive, but you can also easily buy items that are both expensive and bad.
- cainxinth 6y ago> I would willingly pay more if I knew which items are of good quality, but quite often there is no way to tell. Of course there are ways. It’s called product research and asking friends. For example, I could have told him that with Diesel shoes you are paying for style and branding, not performance or durability.
- KozmoNau7 6y agoIt takes research, reading reviews and asking people you trust for their experience. One general rule of thumb that has worked well for me, is to look at how much marketing focus is on selling you a lifestyle and the brand name itself. The higher the focus is on brand name and identity, the less they trust the product to sell itself on its inherent qualities. Unfortunately there is no easy way to ascertain the quality of a particular item. You may be buying online, with only pictures and a description to go on. Sometimes the quality looks and feels acceptable in the store, but the workmanship itself is bad, so the item falls apart after a short time. You can certainly learn to distinguish quality by feeling the fabric and looking at the stitching, but there are so many places to hide shoddy quality out of sight. What I've concluded is that I generally go for items with as little or as discreet branding as possible, as my very first filter. The flashier an item is, the lower I expect the quality to be. It also meshes will with my desire to not be a walking advertising banner. That considerably narrows the list of items I'll have to research in detail. Learning which manufacturers and retailers can be trusted is hard. They may change their suppliers, but keep the same product name, it's hard to know this, unless they specifically tell you. Some online retailers will have only the barest possible information on a product, such as nominal size and color and nothing else, while others will give you an entire rundown of the materials used, which thoughts went into the design, how you can expect a given cut to fit and a full listing of all the important measurements, plus tell you where it was manufactured. That last bit is shockingly absent on so many online shops. And please do try to go for local production and organic/repurposed materials whenever possible :-)
- tobyhinloopen 6y agoInteresting, but biased to expensive clothing. There is very cheap clothing as well, like Primark, where you can get a shirt for a few €, some of which I’ve owned for very long
- TrackerFF 6y agoIt's a fine balance. Buying too cheap clothing, and you'll drive into problems like terrible patterns, poor fabrics, etc. Buying too expensive clothes, and you'll drive into problems like outrageous brand-name surcharges, fabrics which may be too fine. I have yet to find a perfectly fine one-stop shop for all my clothes, so I rather focused on finding the best I could with my own criteria in mind. Online shopping has made this a breeze, if the clothes are consistent in size and quality. Websites like yoox, lyst, etc. make it possible to purchase high quality and dollar items, to very good prices.
- roel_v 6y agoTIL: there are men who own 15 pairs of shoes and 15 belts mostly over a three year time span. I'm pretty sure I haven't owned 15 belts in my whole life, nor 15 pairs of shoes since I left college, and I'm in my early 40's... Not judging, to each his own, I just wonder if I'm the outlier or if he is.
- dx87 6y agoI think he's the outlier. Most people I know own 2 belts; one for casual clothes, one for dress pants. Shoes is normally casual shoes, work boots/dress shoes, hiking boots/running shoes, plus flip-flops or slippers. I think I've only met one man who had that many shoes, and he was really into fashion and collecting sneakers, so he had probably 50 different pairs to make sure he always had some that matched his outfit.
- alistairSH 6y agoBelts I own today: 1 - black leather (only worn with suits) 2 - casual brown leather (jeans, slacks, etc) 1 - nice brown leather (suits, jeans+blazer, etc) 1 - nylon (hiking pants) I currently have 14 pairs of shoes, but about half of those really should be thrown away and I just keep around for wearing on rainy days or in the garden.
- ghaff 6y agoI'm something similar. I have more pairs of shoes--like you a number of them are really worn out ones for gardening etc.--but a decent chunk of them are specialized boots for hiking in various different conditions or boating shoes.
- majewsky 6y agoI have a similar thing with razor blades. I'm honestly baffled when I see commercials for Dollar Shave Club and they talk how they deliver shaving products, including razors, to you each month. When I started to shave around age 17, I got one of these Gillette 5-blade razors, and it came with two replacement heads in the same box. When those were worn out, I bought a 10-pack of replacement heads. I'm now 31 years old and I'm now halfway through that same 10-pack.
- dx87 6y agoOne way to make your clothes last longer is by checking to see how often you're supposed to wash them, and air drying them if possible. Things like jeans really only need to be washed a couple of times a year unless you're spilling stuff on them or being very active and sweaty in them. Growing up, the conventional wisdom was that you always had to wash something after it was worn once, and you were being a slob if you didn't (for some reasons hoodies were exempt), but it turns out that isn't true.
- JohnCohorn 6y ago<Things like jeans really only need to be washed a couple of times a year Biannual laundry might be taking it too far! Jeans don’t need washing every day, and I will often use the same ones for a couple of weeks, especially while WFH. But after a couple of weeks you might notice a bit of odor if you bring them close(ok most people won’t get close enough to smell your jeans). And they will noticeably loosen, wrinkle, and lose the more form fitting shape they have after a hot wash/dry.
- KozmoNau7 6y agoDepending on how often you wear them, washing jeans once a month is probably about right. Remember that washing in itself is not actually that hard on clothes (provided you select the right temperature and program and don't use an old-fashioned top loader with an agitator), it's the dryer that really kills clothes, with all the dry heat and agitation. Line dry your clothes and they'll last much longer. Another factor that may not be as relevant when working from home* is that general dust and dirt settles in and between the cotton fibers and act as abrasives. You can get a lot of that out by giving your jeans a vigorous shake out the window, but cotton is very absorbent and will hold on to dirt and grime, so it's a losing battle. If you never wash them, the wear will accelerate and ruin the fabric, especially in folds and creases. As an aside, some of the "common knowledge" around jeans actually does apply to wool clothes since unlike cotton, the wool fibers have a hydrophobic outer layer, so they will repel dirt. Hanging wool clothes overnight and giving them a shake the next morning is often more than enough to refresh them, cabin luggage-only travelers love merino wool t-shirts for this reason, they can be worn for several days before needing a wash, without developing odors. * Are people wearing jeans when working from home? As long as I'm staying inside, I'm wearing comfy cotton pajama pants and a hoodie or a robe all day, it's so comfortable. The real pants or jeans are only worn for going outside.
- burlesona 6y agoThis is very fascinating, and it’s exactly the kind of data I wish I could have “for free” for my own life. But: > Underwear shirts typically last between 20 and 25 times. This person must have very different wear standards from me, as I would guess my “underwear” shirts last 50+ wears over many years. Although I don’t wear those often, so I admit I may be overestimating how many wears they face. FWIW it’s also about how many washes they face. It’s good to wear clothes more than once per wash, assuming light wear and they aren’t smelly, because washing wears them out a lot more than wearing them does. > But my shirts stand out in a league of their own. I spend 751 euros on shirts yearly. Do you recall my costly affection to high quality shirts? Well, here it shows. Ok now I know this person lives in a different world from me :) I do really agree about buying for quality and thinking in terms of cost per wear. I’ve had great luck with Mack Weldon for t-shirts and undershirts. I especially like the “silver” fabric t-shirts, and I can confidently say I’m getting > 50 wears off these given how long I’ve had mine and how often I wear them. They do eventually wear thinner and looser, but have not developed any tears or holes. And, specifically the silver fabric is amazing in how fresh and clean it always smells. You really can wear it 4-5 times, you only need to wash it when it eventually gets stains.
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. These are some great points. One reason my underwear shirts don't last as long is that I sweat quite a lot. I typically have to divest these shirts not due to wear, but due to them not looking nor feeling fresh anymore. This has led me to seek out the shirts that maximize use considering this. These are shirts that can take a hot washing and that withstand my kind of wear better. I should clearly try out those Mack Weldon shirts.
- hairofadog 6y agoThere’s another axis of quality, which is ethical: how is a given piece of clothing sourced and manufactured? I sometimes end up with clothing that fits poorly – especially in t-shirts – that I chose because of the sourcing story, even though I’m dubious about the impact of voting with my meager few dollars. On a completely different topic, I have discovered that the clothes dryer has a similar impact on the lifespan of clothes that smoking does on people. If you can manage, hanging your clothes to dry – for example, over the back of a chair or whatever – will make them last longer, though I’m not sure if it’s the heat or the spinning that does the damage. (I’ve been trying to dry things on low heat for longer, but I’m not sure if that helps and I’m too lazy to put together a spreadsheet like this person.)
- KozmoNau7 6y agoI harbor no illusions that my limited purchases are going to change the world, but I do try to stick to only buying locally (Europe, in my case) produced clothing, and I prefer non-synthetic materials, preferably organic if possible. I'm not fanatic about it, but I do prefer to know that some care was taken and that worker conditions are at least somewhat decent, and that my clothes didn't come from halfway around the globe for no reason. Ideally I would get all my clothes from thrift stores, but I've only really had any luck with shirts. Pants in my size are rare as hen's teeth in thrift stores. > "the clothes dryer has a similar impact on the lifespan of clothes that smoking does on people" It's the combination of heat and agitation, especially if you let the dryer run until the clothes are completely bone dry. Look at how much fluff collects in the filter, that is fabric that has been beaten out of your clothes. With that sort of treatment, it's no wonder clothes start to look threadbare after a while. If you're the camping/hiking/bushcraft type, dryer lint is absolutely amazing tinder, so at least it has some practical use :-)
- j7ake 6y agoI believe if you religiously optimise for cost per wear you will end up wearing a hiking outfit everyday.
- sandspar 6y agoIt's interesting that he highlights and bolds "tracking this takes less than a minute a day", when the project takes up such a substantial amount of his mental real estate. It seems fitting that a man so interested in tracking numbers would miss the untrackable, arguably more important, items (e.g. freedom from mental encumbrances).
- hoverfalt 6y agoAuthor here. Granted, absolutely. I think you have a great point. I understand this might seem downright neurotic. While I really am into numbers, or rather, finding out how things really work, to me, this has been more about learning R properly and doing so in a context of both novelty and perhaps some degree of relevance. In a way it has been my tinkering hobby to take my thoughts off the wicked problems I deal with at work. But you're absolutely right that this has taken some accumulated amount of effort to build. If I had done this as a consulting project, it would have cost something like two decades worth of clothes. So as a total investment, hardly worth the while. But I would to think that perhaps something good comes out of this way of looking at it. Now I'm in a way done and find that I look for the next thing to fill that new void in my mental real estate.
- audiometry 6y agoIt’s pretty obvious that this is enjoyable for him. I’m guessing it is a chance to combine hobbies (clothing) and professional interests (analysis). Cut the guy a break...
- hoverfalt 6y agoI'm the author of this post, Olof. There are many brilliant points and questions in these discussions. Since I would love to understand different views, experiences and questions, I'll promise to answer any and all questions you might have. So if of interest, ask me anything! :) I'm in Helsinki (GMT +2), so sorry about the latency that might cause.
- broooder 6y agoAnd there were zero, because who would wear the same clothes for 3 years.
- jitendrac 6y agoI am really not a choosy person in this matter, and to reduce toll of selection, I have a simple habit of using only two pairs of clothes, I wear them alternatively. When at home I use loose cotton pants and undershirt. For washing, I wash my under-garments daily and my shirts/pants after one-three uses based on season, in summer its daily wash and in winter its 2-3. My cloths on average lasts 4-5 months and under-garments 2 months.