I 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.
I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
41–50 of 214 posts
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#42I 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.
He's paying $95 per shirt, $13 for a undershirt, $10 per underwear.
And only wears the underwear on 92% of days!
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 s…
Ive 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 g…
> Ive 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.
That’s just called going to a tailor.
But honestly, if you just want coton clothes, that’s not hard to find. It’s just more expensive.
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#44I 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.
Underwear 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.
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 s…
Ive 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 g…
100% agreed, and I've had the exact thought about soap (shampoo, in my case)! I love stores with 'bulk' sections, but they're usually just a small selection of dry cereals, beans, and nuts. Now, to work properly with your own jars, I think you'd want a shopkeeper doing the filling, so he could check the tare. A return to the general store of old, to some extent.
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#46Interesting 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. A…
I grew up being taught that cotton was best and for decades wore it almost exclusively. But something I have realized over the years is that it is also much, much heavier than polyester or nylon blends, especially when it's wet.
If your shirt can't dry overnight then you're forced to buy more shirts just to handle the washing/drying overlap, which is wasteful. Not to mention only owning cotton makes doing anything outside in the rain require more calculus around how many days you will need to dry the clothes that got wet, so now you need to own overlap clothes for still-wearably-clean clothes too. Even worse, if you're in a cold environment then you likely can't keep wearing your wet clothes as they dry, because wet cotton loses insulation, making you feel much colder, so there's more incentive to change even before the end of the day.
Wool is a better option than cotton if you want "natural" fiber that is still wearable when wet, but that comes with the moral guilt and ecological impact of animal husbandry, so I'm not sure if it's better or worse than plastic, which at least is only made from animals and plants that died millions of years ago.
Personally I have chosen to keep cotton for underwear and tank tops for comfort, and also because I anyway own 7 of those so there is enough overlap for them to dry over the weekend when they get wet and I'm in a cold and/or humid climate. But for pants and shorts where I only own two of each (and only bring one of each when traveling) then polyester/nylon that can dry overnight in most any climate is more practical. Socks and long sleeves I've decided to go with wool despite the animal cruelty because it's the most practical. I only need a couple pairs of socks and a single long sleeve to get by in a warmer climate, and I have a polyester coat for colder climates.
It still feels a bit high impact, but as you say, most stuff lasts many years so I don't feel too bad about it when I see people buying more stuff than I have in my entire wardrobe on a single casual shopping trip.
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#47Tracking 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.
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends how much walking / hiking / running / whatever else you do. A typical pair of running shoes lasts somewhere around 300-500 miles. (You could probably stretch a pair further than that, but you run much higher risk of injury once the cushioning wears down.) If you put in a modest 5 miles a day and have two pairs in rotation, then expect to replace both pairs every 6 months (if not more often). It is not unco…
Yeah, I’ll use regular sneakers until the soles fall off, but I’ve realized that with running shoes you can either take the pain in your wallet or in your feet. A hundred bucks every few months is better than not being able to move.
"Feet" doesn't cover it. "Body" is more appropriate.
Running with poor quality shoes unduly stresses your knees, hips, and lower back. Over time, this is likely to develop chronic pain, or bursitis, or other problems that can lead to long-term mobility issues.
If you're going to run regularly, you should find a way to either afford the propert shoes in good repair, or learn to run barefoot
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
>It's completely normal even among working class to own a summer house by a lake. Just want to understand, by normal do you mean less than 1/5 Finnish households? Going by the source below, I don't know if I'm missing something but it does not seem to be normal? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01692... .
According to the same link you shared, enough people own second homes that 61% of the population has access to a friend or relatives home. That feels pretty normalized (compared to here in the US, where I live in a high-income area and only know one person with a second home (and it's a permanent tent))
I think you’ll find quite a few people have access to vacation lodging, but they don’t talk about it for one reason or another.
Re: I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, 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.
I’m more surprised by the seemingly lack of longevity of what he buys than by the costs. 442 euros is two pairs of dress shoes or one pair of good boots. I don’t think you can buy anything other than sneakers for £50. My own dresser is not that far removed from his regarding to its content (I have far less blazers, don’t wear hoodies and have more suits) but I think I cycle each piece far less than he does because my…
Agreed. High quality dress shoes and boots are very repairable. And men’s shoe fashion changes very slowly. A good pair can easily last a decade with good care. Modern sneakers are another story though.