For most of my life I have had too many clothes. I lived in places with somewhat variable climates. I needed clothes for work, clothes for school, clothes for play, clothes for winter, clothes for summer, beach clothes, church clothes, out-on-the-town clothes. To make matters worse, I’ve always been difficult to buy gifts for: my hobbies mostly involving rather specialized radios and computers, or musical instruments, or rather exotic books. So family members who felt compelled to give me gifts often resorted to articles of clothing. No doubt they also hoped to upgrade my appearance.
Here on the island, there’s nothing that could reasonably be called winter weather (except when I go to the summit, where there is snow, but this is a rare thing). When we moved here, I radically downsized everything including books and clothes. I’m retired, so no more “work clothes” and I don’t go to church (it would be casual if I did) or clubbing. Pretty much every day, rain or shine, I can be found in an aloha shirt, sports shorts, and rubbah slippah (flip-flops) — attire suitable for work around the compound or at the beach. It’s rare that I engage in any enterprise that requires new clothes. The shirts, at this point, are almost all from local thrift shops and I don’t often add to my collection. As a result, it’s fairly easy for me to track the wear on my wardrobe. There are always two or three shirts (out of a dozen or so) that I think look especially nice, and I’ll wear those when I’m likely to interact with people other than HA (whom I see every day). After a while, the “nice” shirts won’t be so nice anymore, and will get relegated to ordinary everyday use.
In the old days, I might reach for a shirt that I haven’t worn in a while and then notice that it has gotten somewhat shabby. “Hmmm, when did that happen?” Now, though I mentally track the condition of my shirts from day to day and can see how they degrade from being washed or I remember when they get damaged in the course of my work around the property.
Observations:
- There seems to be an infinite supply of very nice shirts available at thrift shops for a fraction of what they would cost new. Of course, I’m trading time and convenience for cost, not a choice I have always had in life.
- Laundering does damage, but seems inevitable if I don’t want to smell bad.
- Clothes actually last a good long while if I don’t damage them while doing manual labor.
—2p