Cleaning out my wardrobe and wondering how many tees a person needs. Not sleeping tees or tees for dirtywork (like painting,gardening or mechanics), but regular presentable tees.

I have just pared things to be under 20, but still think that is a ridiculous amount of tee shirts. I will be working my way to a dozen.

How many tee shirts do you have and what kinds/colors are they? Do you think you have too many?

well jilly your talking about how many a person NEEDS or has...

too many folks get caught up on they are cheap easily disposable ... and colors and logos or scenes...i dont generally buy a t-shirt for say presentable dress ware...because i dont consider them in that category..... at all.

reg. summer tops or blouses i use for that...

otherwise my T's are what i call bang around clothing... and where they are easily washable and dryable i dont need many...if they begin to wear or fade throw out cheap enough to buy a couple more here or there...for me a half dozen is plenty, for a man, twice that...replace as needed

my "real" clothing space is more important than to have to have a entire draw devoted to T's of any nature...even nite sleep ones

We have different opinions on what is presentable and I will leave it at that. I just wear tee shirts everywhere and hardly anything else. Can't say i want to be judged on that but i did post it in a publicly viewed forum.

Mainly I wanted to open a conversation on what people have in their closets. Maybe we can encourage each other to pare items down.

I have too much of everything I think

Love my tees and wear/prefer them most of the time too Jilly. Perfectly presentable for places I go most often.
LOL I must not love em quite as much as you do tho. 20?? Holy moly!
I guess the number of shirts or whatever might depend on how often you do laundry too. If you do laundry daily like I do, you don't need so many..but if you only do laundry once a week or every 2 wks or more...well ya need enough to last that long right??

I do have a problem wit holding on to things that I "might" wear again some day. Or MIGHT fit again. THAT is one thing I need to work on.

My dad has lots more tees than I. He has some very nice ones that I love. I always raid his closet when i visit.

I think a lot of this depends on the kind of tee shirt. to me, they are just shirts. Some are very soft, drape nicely, and have rich, flattering colors.

I do laundry every two weeks or so, sometimes longer. I just wait until there is a big enough pile to be worth doing, so i don't have to waste water on a small load.

I still want to get down to a dozen tees. The older ones are finding their way into the chore clothes/rag bag, slowly. Of course the tees i like the most get the holes in them fastest.

Oh, and yes, i understand totally on the MIGHT fit into idea. I don't know what to do with the fat shirts and skinny shirts.

lol Fat jeans, skinny jeans...wishful thinking jeans!
and of course the holy most comfy jeans ya can't part with

I have read in the organizing books that the frequent advice is to get rid of everything that does not currently fit. And then to buy new stuff when your size changes.

But i find that unrealistic as my weight fluctuates between 20 pounds or so regularly.

Sometimes the book advice isn't always the best advice. But it still means i have too many clothes.

I think i have really done enough pruning for right now, since I am coming out of the hot season and have no idea what i will and won't wear going into fall/winter. So i will keep my eye on what I wear and don't wear, and what looks good and doesn't, as i go. Then reassess in a few months.

Does that sound reasonable?

I have been very actively paring down my tshirt collection with each time the BigBrother BigSister truck comes through. I would guess I have 15 left. I do biking / kayaking / etc. type of stuff and wear tshirts for those - and plus in the summer I wear tshirts as my daily wear since I don't leave the house. I can easily go 2 weeks between washes since in the summer it's just tshirts and shorts so the laundry bin takes a while to get full enough to do a full load with.

Each one that I have left is one I really love. Like the one I got working at a mountain bike rally in New Hampshire. And the one with a Japanese symbol for love on it. And the pink shirt that says Bermuda with a heart. So now we're down to ones that would be hard to give up.

It's winter now though, so they all sit in a back closet - now I'm wearing my collection of probably 8 matching sweatshirts, all the exact same size, in a set of colors. They are much bulkier so I need to do wash more regularly now, I can fill up the washing machine after about a week with these. Again since I work at home, I pretty much work in sweats. So this is all I wear all winter, except the few times I leave the house.

Jilly -

My weight fluctuates between say 115 and 140. Right now I'm on the 140 end. My sweats and tshirts fit me throughout that range, so I don't have any clothes in the house that don't fit - the only exception is one box of jeans that are too small. I never wear jeans any more - only sweats - so I'm not sure why I keep them. Mostly because all jeans on the shelves now are styles I dislike, and I really like these jeans' style, so if I can get to fit into them again I'd enjoy wearing them I think, to go out dancing or something.

Whoops - i just brought home four newer (used) tee shirts from a thrift store. They are not ratty, stained or holey like many of the ones I have here. I need to dig out four old ones then, so i can keep the One In One Out rule.

what is it with most of us that we hold onto our jeans even if they dont fit...lately ive been giving mine away a pair here or there to someone who takes them and will fit into them...eventually ill be rid of them and have that extra space...

i loveee sweats so non clingy and warm and comfy...some just reg. sweats some a lil more dressy...just wish the ones that were a little more dressy were not so thin and flimsy...whats with that ????

they cut out the wind come in some very nice colors an you can mix or match...i dont like the sweats with hoodies tho...i dont like that bulk around my neck...

long live sweats giggle

I am in sweats right now, and they are pretty much all I wear. Since I work from home, I live in sweats and save a lot on clothes, I suppose.

I do have a few pairs of jeans that no longer fit - but the reason I keep them is that I don't like at all the modern style of jeans. I don't like the "ride on the lower hip" style. I like jeans that are more covering. So I have to keep my old jeans and hope I fit into them again at some point, because otherwise I'm stuck with jeans that I find to be a bit indecent.

Sweats, at least, have full coverage.

I don't own jeans because I don't like the feeling of something tight around my waist. If I had to wear jeans they would only be the hip riders, actually. Different likes again!

Also, I love a hoodie on my sweatshirts, either with zips or anoraks.

I wouldn't wear jeans as a child because I didn't like the tight feeling against my skin. I preferred softer fabrics. So it seems we're similar there.

But I do prefer something that covers up to my high waist, so the shirt then covers down past that point and creates total coverage.

I mostly wear sweats inside so I prefer a simple pull-over with no zippers or other items in them. If I went out and a sweatshirt was not enough, I'd want to put something else on over the sweatshirt (a windbreaker) so I still had that solid smooth fabric against my skin.

I found my nice shirts that I was missing! I have some awesome tunics that I could not for the life of me figure out where they were. But now that I am making a tiny bit of headway in the boxes of stuff i have cluttering up my mobile, i found them!

So now I need to reassess the stuff i have and eliminate enough to make room for these 'new' things.

If I could I would live in my t-shirts and yoga pants. But I have to dress for work so that means I have way too many clothes. I forget what I have. You know how some celebrity types have whole rooms that are just their closets? I have that going on...but way not so fancy. I have a few things in my room, then in the sewing/treadmill/bycicle...general clutter room, I have the rest of my garb and shoes. That way its out of the way.
What I need to do is go through it all, have a massive garage sale and just keep what I actually wear. I am sort of a clothes horse. A victim of fashion. I'm old but still hip. yeah, that's me!

Kathy, that kitchen photo with your keets is really sweet!

Thanks! We had fun today.

I was just admiring that birds-on-a-stick photo too, it is so cute!

I'm lucky that I work at home, so I can just be in my sweats. I do have one suit left in my closet, for emergency wear, but I don't think I've worn it in the past ten years.

Think - if you sell all the old clothes, maybe you could buy a few new items with the money that you really adore!

Okay,l I just acquired a new used tunic. So a tee shirt has to go! I will take it out to the fabric pile now.

Have to say I'm a big fan of the tunic. That way I can wear tight yoga pants and no one has to look at my bum. Used to wear jeans on Fridays and all weekend, but not anymore. This way I can just gain weight and not know and not care!
Hubby might have a different point of view.
I always thought the women in Hawaii had the right idea with the moo moo's.

I need some tight yoga pants. All i have is baggy sweats. And I have a nice bum! No one would know it, based on how I dress.

Mumus, yeah, and caftans!

ha ha! get you some calvin's compression yoga pants. They made my hubby go "whoa!" one time when I was climbing up to do something. It was worth it. He's 62...I was happy he noticed.

LOL, Kathy, that is brilliant! Good on you!

I'll look for some of those.

I was browsing through Etsy for handmade tunics - I might need to get rid of the tees/sweats completely. Instead I should wear tunics and tight yoga pants. I am doing this all wrong.

BigBrother BigSister came through again this morning meaning last night we were putting stuff into bags for them. Bob had about one full bag of clothes but I felt that was too little, given how cluttered the house was. I was sure we could do better. So we went through all our hats / gloves / coats / etc. and found two more bags of stuff that we just didn't wear. It was nice stuff, like a vest I'd bought on Nantucket, but I just never wear it. So it made more sense to go to a home where it would be used.

I didn't go through my tshirts because I've gone through them so many times in the past that I'm down to my "favorites". But with that being said, I have 23 of them. I work from home so in the summer I only wear tshirts, but I do laundry once a week or so. Shouldn't I only need 7 then, with maybe a few extra?

I have:

2 black - useful for layering under things
1 white
2 that say "kayak" in nautical flags - my friend Debi made these for me and I *love* them, I love kayaking in them. And in the summer we try to kayak daily.
2 Academy of Knightly Arts shirts, my sword school. Necessary school uniform.
1 Fraggle Rock, I love this, it makes me feel dancy
1 blue tie dye, I love this.
1 red tie dye, ditto. I see a trend.
1 'love bermuda' - pretty and summery
1 Nantucket love-to-bike-Nantucket, which I do.
1 Nantucket 'pass for access on remote beaches' which I also love
1 Japanese love kanji
1 Japanese peace kanji
1 Japanese imagination kanji
1 Japanese cutting-through-chaos moon image
1 mountain biking "event official" shirt when I volunteered at an event
1 battery-powered heart that lights up and beats to music, very cool for gigs
1 battery-powered black equalizer shirt that does the same thing.
1 plain black shirt for customizing at some point for the band
1 red-on-black sci-fi shirt from when I ran the SciFi society at WPI in 1986
1 "yes we are sisters" shirt that I made for me and my sister when we went to Cancun, since everyone always asked us that

So I adore all these shirts and rotate through them regularly. I.e. each month in warmer months I will wear each one at least once a month. Except the sisters and sci-fi ones, those are for special occasions. Still, I can't imagine wanting to give any away.

Maybe that means I should accept that this is my standard wardrobe and be content with it. Maybe it also means I should look more closely at the other non-tshirts which I rarely wear and start donating some of those. In the summer I pretty much only wear tshirts. In the winter I pretty much only wear sweatshirts. So the other "pretty shirts" I own are just wasted in the closet. Someone else might be wearing those regularly.

When I want to dress up, I always wear one of my long dresses. I would never wear sweats and a pretty shirt, for example. I'm not fond of jeans. So there's no real "bottom" I would wear with those pretty shirts. If I was going to wear a skirt, I'd just go for the dress as it's easier.

So maybe that will be my focus the next time BBBS comes around.

I think accepting that as your official wardrobe is a fine idea, and you do have the dresses for non teeshirt/sweats occasions.

(Every time I think of you, I think of those dresses!)

Right, Jilly, I always wear those dresses if I'm "dressing up". I rarely even think of wearing anything else. So the other "dress shirts" I have, while pretty, are just going to sit there for years and years. They might as well go to people who need them for interviews or formal occasions.

I agree. Those clothes are just there, with no one to love them. You can even whittle them down one at a time, one a week, and see if you ever miss them.

I think i will pull a shirt out of my closet and put it on the donate pile right now!

....


OK. I just pulled out a very cute little sailor's shirt that I know I am never going to wear. It's now in the donate bag.

Your turn!

Dear Jilly -

The BBBS will probably come around in another month, so when they do I definitely will target the "dress shirts"! I know I haven't worn any of them in years. It's time to let others wear them and enjoy them!

Ok, I am going to make myself get up and find another clothing item to put in the donate pile.

....

I just picked out a shirt and pair of capris and added them to the pile. They were both nice items, but i didn't love them. So that is now done.

That is great Jilly! One step at a time.

There are so many things we "like" in this world. But other people would *adore* those things. So it's great to let the things go be adored, and to have our own worlds focus on things that are adored.

Right. I'd cleaned things out enough by now that there is nothing I don't like. But that's still too much stuff. It should only be things I adore.

Getting up now to put another clothing item on the donate pile.

-----

Ok, done! I can seem to manage at least just one thing at each time.

I'm in that state too with my clothing. I've gone through them probably 20 times over the past two years and kept whittling down. So now I'm down to all things I like. I like each item. But I still don't wear some. So it's time to prune further, when BBBS comes around next time.

Oops. I have more clothes now. I'm visiting with family in Florida, and we of course made some visits to Goodwill (our favorite activity). My mother in law had me pick out clothes for my birthday and for xmas. Nice things...but now I have MORE clothes. And dan bought me two pairs of really pretty pants as just a gift, just to be sweet.

I guess when i get home I should pull out that many more clothes to donate away.

It is so easy to acquire, isn't it?

How are you doing with your clothing Jilly?

I looked again at my tshirt list and I'm content with that. I enjoy each shirt and I do wear them. So I am fine with having those. I haven't added any new ones, and I have a nice selection to match my moods.

It's the dressier shirts I should look at weeding out, since I rarely if ever wear those.