august 25

Many years ago I worked in clothing retail, and as anyone that has ever worked in clothing retail could tell you, your personal wardrobe grows exponentially as a result. There was once a time when I could go an entire month without having to do laundry and still wear clean clothes every day. That was a short lived period as I found out that the UFO pants, Kikwear jeans as well as the other brightly colored, reflective strip edged shirts and pants really didn't have much staying power in the world of fashion. 

Since those days of my unfashionable foolish youth, I have been relatively modest with the number and types of clothes I buy, primarily because it made selecting what to wear a lot easier. Also, a few years ago I stumbled upon a website called Project 333, which gave me even more inspiration to pare down what I had. On her site, Courtney Carver, goes through all the benefits of only using thirty-three items of clothing per a three month period. While I didn't completely reduce my drawers to thirty-three items I did however keep the rotation of what I wore to a minimal level. In fact over the last year or so, it is often a point of hilarity that I am always wearing a plaid button down for just about any occasion. So often that, other people will purposely not wear similar items so as to not match. 

Despite the repetitiveness of my wardrobe I still seemed to have an abundance of unworn items. T-shirts and race shirts are the biggest culprit of mass accumulation. Much like the string bags I discussed the other day, every race gives you another shirt to take home. Some of them are nice and I use them for workout clothes but every swag bag shirt seems to fit just a little bit differently and the awkward fitting ones tend to get pushed to the back of the drawer never to be worn.

I was hoping the clothes would get me through a few days but this is the bulk of it here. I'll make another pass through the closet and drawers and I might come up with a few more things but it's hard to whittle down when there is very little to start with. I will take this as a good thing though, for I won't have to face the embarrassment of pulling a pair of jeans with forty-two inch wide bottoms out of my drawer to post a picture on here for everyone.