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I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
- herunan 2y agoLove it. This is such a fun way of visualising your everyday life. Of course, being data-driven may not always be the right answer for everything, but it will at least help you make more conscious decisions. I can guarantee I have a blazer or two in my wardrobe with a much higher Cost Per Wear than the author's ones due to lack of use.
- nacho-daddy 2y agoI love that the author took the time to collect and plot his own data. And this was 2020? In 3 years my washing machine should be able to do this.
- floren 2y agoInstead, in 3 years your washing machine will refuse to run if your Tide Pods subscription runs out, or if you attempt to use bootleg pods.
- shiroiushi 2y agoSounds like a good idea really. If consumers are dumb enough to buy such machines, then that's what they should get. It's just like the inkjet scam: people have been buying these stupid things for decades, despite the ready availability of far-superior laser printers, just because the inkjets have a slightly lower initial price. After this much time, it's really hard for me to feel any kind of sympathy for the people scammed by the inkjet printer industry.
- al_borland 2y ago> If consumers are dumb enough to buy such machines, then that's what they should get. In some markets they don't have much of a choice. I want a dumb TV, but good luck finding one without looking into digital signage, where it might not have built in speakers. The costs start rising extremely quickly to buy based on principle. > inkjets have a slightly lower initial price Most people shop on price. But it's not just the initial price, it's also the toner. I just looked up a color laser printer vs inkjet. 2 random ones near the top of Amazon's results. Laser: $249 + $155 for more toner (Brother printer and toner) InkJet: $199 + $22 for more ink (Epson ecotank with generic ink) Or.. InkJet: $70 + $35 for more ink (HP printer with HP ink) People are going to see this and think they can by a new printer for the price of just getting new toner for the laser. The key, as I'm sure you know, is the yield on the laser refill is 3,000 sheets vs the HP's ~100 sheets. But the ink on the ecotank refill is claiming 7,500 sheets. So do they want to pay $155 for 3,000 or $22 for 7,500? It's not so cut and dry and very few people care enough about printers to look that closely into it. They are busy with other stuff.
- shiroiushi 2y ago>It's not so cut and dry and very few people care enough about printers to look that closely into it. They are busy with other stuff. The problem I've seen is that, even when you try to tell these not-so-knowledgeable people about this stuff and point out how they can save money with better choices, they really don't want to hear it. >But the ink on the ecotank refill is claiming 7,500 sheets. So do they want to pay $155 for 3,000 or $22 for 7,500? That's not what they're buying though: they're buying the HP, not the ecotank printer. >In some markets they don't have much of a choice. I want a dumb TV This is true: your choices are shaped by the choices of all the other consumers, because the whole reason you can buy a huge 65" TV for $750 and not $75,000 is because of massive quantities of scale. Mfgrs can only offer so many different models cost-effectively, so they make stuff that consumers will buy. Given a choice between a smart TV that lets them watch Netflix/YouTube without any extra hardware at all, or a dumb TV that doesn't and needs an additional device (and remote control), and similar prices for the two (thanks to the mfgrs getting subsidies from advertisers on the smart TVs), 99% of the consumers are going to pick the smart TV. At least with laser printers, there's enough consumers out there who demand home/small office laser printers that there's plenty of choices for them, and consumer-friendly prices. But there's still tons of people who go for the $70 POS HP with absurdly-priced 100-page refills. The digital signage devices probably suck for watching movies too, if you care at all about color accuracy. Those devices aren't meant for watching 4k movies at home for a few hours per day, they're meant for displaying public information in public areas with possibly bright (or even natural) lighting, and doing so 24x7.
- devnullbrain 2y agoJust thinking a washing machine bought in 2027 will be able to last long enough to track data for another 3 years is optimistic.
- n4r9 2y agoI did a double-take at the 3.5k Euro spend per year on clothing. My own spending is probably 2-3 orders of magnitude smaller. But then I saw how many shoes they own, and the fact that they have a summer house where at least one pair resides. This person lives differently to me.
- distances 2y ago> and the fact that they have a summer house where at least one pair resides. This person lives differently to me. He seems to live in Finland. It's a sparsely populated country covered in forests and with an abundance of lakes[0] which has led to a quite democratic summer house culture. It's completely normal even among working class to own a summer house by a lake. There's of course variation. A large summer house close to population centers will be more expensive than a plain one, more remote, and/or not by a water body. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_of_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_lakes_of_Finland
- n4r9 2y agoThanks, didn't know that. Still, the guy is spending wild amounts of money on clothing. Eur442 per year on shoes? I spend maybe £30-50 on an everyday pair that'll last me a couple of years. I also have a couple of pairs of dress shoes, hiking boots, running shoes, and lifting shoes, but all of those have been going for 5-10 years.
- distances 2y agoYep, it wouldn't make sense for me to do this tracking either. It would just show me wearing one pair until it has holes in the soles. But I do acknowledge there are lots of people who are more enthusiastic about shoes than I am.
- n4r9 2y agoSure. I guess it's interesting how differently people can interpret the phrase "buy what you need".
- cafard 2y agoI found the turnover rate of tee shirts surprising. I imagine that my tee shirts get 40 or 45 wears per year, and I very rarely replace them.
- Molitor5901 2y agoI wear them until they have holes and then use them as shop rags, etc.
- Gigachad 2y agoSimilar, but I keep old clothes to use as test fabric for machine embroidery.
- RandomThoughts3 2y agoUnderwear shirts are usually thiner than tee shirts and are made to be worn under a shirt. You can’t really compare. The issue here is that he buys them too cheap. Cheap underwear die incredibly fast because underwear tend to go through more wash cycles.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- Simulacra 2y agoThere is one interesting caveat, there are websites like TeeFury Which advertise one T-shirt per day. When it's gone, it's gone. When the site first cranked up, I bought three or four T-shirts in a couple of weeks. I could see someone getting on there and seeing a T-shirt they want every week and end up buying 50 T-shirts in a year.
- sneak 2y agoClothes washers (and dryers, if they are used) seem to destroy clothing in Europe much faster than they do in North America. I'm not 100% sure why that is.
- Molitor5901 2y agoWow. I buy one pair of jeans per year, I now have three pairs. This year I've bought exactly 2 t-shirts on vacation in Spain. I cannot imagine spending so much on clothing, that just seems.. overkill. Where do you put it all???
- dan-robertson 2y agoMaybe one thing is that price per item can vary a lot, eg a $50 coat isn’t going to take 60 times less space than a $3k coat so it’s possible to spend a lot more without using lots more space. That said, the author doesn’t seem to be buying wildly expensive items. I assume they get through with something like an ordinary sized wardrobe and chest of drawers, plus some kind of shoe storage near a door. And I guess they dispose of things that are unused or too worn.
- Molitor5901 2y agoI have one modest closet, one chest of drawers, and my wife has the same with a little more; shoes.. What struck me was that this was his clothing purchases in a single year. That's a lot of buying and disposing, which results in .. disasters like the mountain of discarded clothes you can see from space in the Chilean desert https://www.wired.com/story/fashion-disposal-environment/ https://www.wired.com/story/fashion-disposal-environment/
- ZephyrBlu 2y agoWhen you spend this much money on clothes and shoes it’s not for functional reasons. Also, you keep it in your wardrobe. Do you not have a wardrobe?
- InMice 2y agoInteresting data tracking. I have to say for my jeans - I never put them in the dryer, always hung dry. All my jeans are now 10-20 years old now and except for some wear on the back cuff from wearing them around the house without shoes on they look and feel brand new. I can't find author mention "dryer" anywhere in the article. Hung dry clothes last a long time. it's the machine dryer that slowly destroys them IMO. Another thing Im doing is switching to 100% cotton (or just no plastic fibers). I love the breathability and light feel of cotton shirts.
- dawnerd 2y agoI’m switching over to merino wool whenever it goes on sale. Socks first and it’s been a huge change in quality for me. My feet are much happier.
- floren 2y ago> Another thing Im doing is switching to 100% cotton (or just no plastic fibers). I love the breathability and light feel of cotton shirts. I've been wanting to do the same; it's kind of amazing how at some point everything started to be made with plastics, even jeans. If I had the time, space, and equipment, I'd make my own clothes from patterns. Because I have none, I guess I'll be carefully inspecting tags while shopping (and I'm prepared for a lot of frustration). Wish there was more of a cottage industry around homemade clothing!
- InMice 2y agoIve honestly considered the same thing. Wouldnt it be nice to make a few tailored "masters" and then just make your own shirts off those. Perfect fit everytime time. It's just the senseless waste of the modern world. Like dry laundry soap, why cant i just bring my glass jar to the grocery store, tar it, refill from a bulk bin. Why do we have to make millions of plastic containers, so pointless. Ive only been to one grocery store in my life where this was possible. Im sick of senseless plastic everywhere. My personal theory is our biggest sources of plastic ingestion is: clothing made of plastic slowly wearing away and inhaling treadwear from car tires on the road.
- readthenotes1 2y ago28 wears for an undershirt? I have many that are over a decade old. I have a feeling that the author and I live dramatically different lifestyles.
- egypturnash 2y ago> Someone once said their goal is to have a wardrobe with nothing but favorite clothes. That makes sense not only from a value perspective, but in light of my data, that may also be the best alternative in terms of cost performance. My clothes-buying strategy has settled on "if it doesn't look great on me in the fitting room then it doesn't come home with me". Which is pretty similar. You can still end up with things that rarely get worn for other reasons but it's a good filter.
- koolba 2y ago> In some cases, buying cheap is provenly more expensive There’s an inherent bias in being willing to throw away a cheap pair of shoes that are a bit worn and stuffed. But not being willing to toss a $500 pair of Bruno Maglis with the same level of wear. That leads to the latter being worn further and driving it down till it eventually passes the cheap stuff.
- changoplatanero 2y agowhen i asked the shoe salesman which pair of shoes has the best cost per mile they looked at me like i was insane lol
- imp0cat 2y ago:D They probably didn't have any good ones and were afraid to tell the truth. Seriously though, anything handmade with leather has a chance to last for a long time (or be repairable!). It will be expensive though.
- devnullbrain 2y agoAlso, if I was tracking usage like OP I'm confident it would change what I decided to wear.
- jsnell 2y ago> The 90 euro Converse sneakers and the 30 euro Mywears have a similar CPW of 0.87 euros and 0.70 €, respectively. Their effective cost is roughly the same, which means that walking around in the cheap Mywears is roughly as expensive as walking around in Converses. In this case, money buys quality, at least when measured by durability. I don't think there's anything wrong with the author spending a lot of money on clothes and replacing their clothes at a high velocity. If buying stuff makes you happy, buy stuff. I've certainly spent a lot of money on board games I don't play enough. Tracking the cost per use seems like a good way to control the habit. But this paragraph makes it seem as if the author can't make themselves actually admit that's the reason, and need to find an excuse for it. No, sorry, cheap sneakers do not wear out after 43 uses or expensive ones after 104 uses. At that point I'd persinally be classifying them as indistinguishable from new. Like, at best the author got bored of them after that many uses.
- itronitron 2y agoIt would be better to track shoe (and sock) use with a pedometer.
- imp0cat 2y agoOh but there definitely are differences between cheap and expensive sneakers. The other thing is that some people might not notice them because they don't walk much, never getting to the sneaker "EOL", so to speak.
- kristopolous 2y agoI've gone from a $400 shoe preference to $20 over the years. Comfortable cheap ones are harder to find and they don't last as long but in practice it's more like 40-70% as long. So I just buy 2-3 after I find a good one and still walk away saving a bunch
- androiddrew 2y agoI logged in after reading this to provide the answer to the question after reading. “Nerd”. It’s glorious, I wish I could maintain the same level of consistency as this guy did in collecting this data.
- wakawaka28 2y agoTracking all this data is pointless. How many clothes can you buy if you put that energy into making money instead? Buy what you like and what you intuitively know is working well for you. As for the analysis, the prices are subject to random inflation, and the actual wear and tear is highly variable. Even the quality of the same product bought years apart can be different enough to mess up the analysis.
- hilux 2y ago> Tracking all this data is pointless. Did you read the blog? He does some very interesting analysis.
- wakawaka28 2y agoI lost interest part of the way through. I don't need to read the whole thing to know he could be doing something better with his time.
- hilux 2y agoWhy so negative? You're not the keeper of his time. Maybe he doesn't smoke weed or play five hours of video games daily. Why can't you appreciate that he put effort into writing up a thought-provoking analysis that also helps other people?
- wakawaka28 2y agoI can appreciate that he put the analysis out but you can bet that he didn't do it to help other people. He did it to portray himself in a certain light. As I said there are many reasons why this is not helpful. Those are the thoughts that the blog post provoked in my mind, and I am one to geek out on the arcane sometimes too. I didn't say I was the keeper of his time or that he's smoking weed and playing games daily, or that he should. I don't smoke weed or play games either. I'm just saying he should put all that energy into something better.
- grahamj 2y agoThis is great, well done :)
- markhahn 2y agoOh, thank you for the validation! For three years I've been measuring, weighing, logging all my nails and hair and poop, and I thought I was alone!
- dang 2y agoDiscussed at the time: I’ve tracked every piece of clothing I’ve worn for three years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25869464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25869464 - Jan 2021 (100 comments)
- timnetworks 2y agoI live in america and my jeans are $20 and if something happens to them it's cheaper to get a new pair :) :( :)
- devnullbrain 2y agoThen $20 only represents part of the cost to you and your planet.
- Animats 2y agoThe first app for that: [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDubWJU0aU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDubWJU0aU
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hilux 2y agoWhat an interesting analysis. It actually got me thinking about which of my clothes I actually wear, and which should probably be divested.
- deathanatos 2y ago20 to 25 uses for an undershirt seems terrible. Once per week for church and it is worn out in 6 months. Heaven forbid you dress formally for work and it is gone after a month of use…? (spread out by the other shirts in the inventory, but still.) An average of 102 USD for a pair of shorts¹ is something else though, and like other people in the thread note, … Larry, I'm on DuckTales. (171 USD, real / pair of shoes.) (Board member/CEO/VP/etc., if you're curious what profession gets one such a lifestyle.) I … I struggle to find enough time in my life to keep the fuel efficiency spreadsheet for my car up to date. (Though even that did reveal some findings: we get better fuel economy when the bike rack isn't attached. Not a terribly surprising conclusion, and the difference really wasn't that great.) I'd like to have this for some things in my life, … but it's never clear whether it's worth it. Especially for clothing. This tells you post facto whether a purchasing decision was good, or not. What good does that do me…? Unless it is something I'll purchase again, but I feel like for clothing that is rare to begin with, and even where I do, it's dominated by more mundane filters like "is there even another supplier that I know of in this area?" Shoes³ are a good example: most stores' stock is so utterly pathetic that the answer is "the store has exactly 1 pair in your size" (and it's hideous, or doesn't actually fit, etc.) (Same problem with dress shirts, jeans. I have gotten the impression that this is mostly a me problem — my build is suffering reverse economies of scale as most of America outweighs me substantially.) At purchase time is when I need the data … and there, reviews are terrible. I'd truly love to ban reviewers who fail to give me the trifecta of "what size are you, what size did you purchase, and how did it fit?", esp. on Amazon. "It fits" does little good if I have no idea what size you are. Did you buy "your typical size" or did you buy based on your measurements? Etc. Lots of reviews, but next to no data. Compound with false advertising (e.g., "Silk" items made of polyester: my top hit on "silk pajamas²" is 95%/5% poly/span, i.e., 0% silk, and has silk in the title; multiple material listings that contradict each other etc.) ¹7 shorts at an inventory value of 535 EUR. 535/7 = 76.42 EUR. 76.42 EUR to USD (at today's exchange rates; this is a bit wrong I know) => 85.31 USD. Adjust for inflation (the article is (2021)) => 102.66 USD ²I choose silk as, given its luxuriousness, it is more susceptible to this. If you ask for polyester, I'm pretty sure you'll get true to the word there. With silk in particular, there's also a lot of preying on consumers probably not understanding the difference between silk and satin. ³Ironically one of my most recent shoe purchases was via Amazon, and a real risk given how low the price was. Astoundingly they fit not too bad (not perfect) but the low cost means they definitely have a low CPW, and they've seen a fair bit of use with little degradation. The old adage about the better pair of boots … IDK. I'll pay up for shoes, but that pair is providing a stark counter-example to "you get what you pay for". But, I have a mid-range pair from Amazon too that degraded after a few wears. (I repaired it, but still. It was much too young, and it was basically that the lining was not well attached. But it makes me still wary that the good pair was one-off stroke of luck that I can't replicate.)
- tetris11 2y agoScrolling through this thread, I feel like I am the only one who experienced a web page where the CSS gave me a blank rectangle on the left side, with all the content smushed narrowly to the right.
- martin_a 2y agoHappened to me too and was wondering whether this was on purpose or not. Figured out the blog template is probably broken. Two column layout, both equal width on 100% container... That can't go well...
- terpiljenya 2y agoI did the same thing, tracking my outfits for years, and finally decided to build an app that automatically organizes wardrobe from your photos to make it easier. Check it out if you're interested: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sparkly-personal-stylist-ai/id6467518194 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sparkly-personal-stylist-ai/id...
- cainxinth 2y agoI tracked the clothes I wear while cycling last fall and winter so I would know what to wear given the weather. I record temperature, humidity, windspeed, and level of sunshine. It’s been very useful. Even after years of outdoor biking, I still sometimes get fooled by a bright, dry, windy, 65 degree day and forget how chilly they can be, but my spreadsheet will remind me.