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Three month minimal wardrobe test

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I sorely underestimated the number of shirts needed. One polo, one short sleeve, and one long sleeve between each pair of trousers, was fine for summer sun, but not for when longer sleeves are required. Doubling that to two long sleeve shirts made it more sensible, and created space for gettting the white shirts back in.

I was eager to get this done for the first of June, and I think I have it sorted now.

Wardrobe summary.jpg


As planned, on the hanging rail, are the trousers running down the formality spectrum, and the shirts between, can be worn with the trousers at either side. There's more than I was originally aiming for, but I think this is a sensible minimum for doing laundry up to two weeks apart.

Wardrobe full.jpg


It looks a lot, but not when it's broken down. I don't want to be that guiy who always wears the same trousers and shirts every time I meet up with friends and family (when lockdown ends), so this allows a few sensible options

Wardrobe event.jpg


The bottom group is an overlap with the daily decent, as they don't all need saving for best. The daily decents are quite a small group, considering they might need to run for two weeks. However, as the reason it would run to two weeks would be bad health, I'll likely be in loungewear for several days anyway. So for summer, the line up looks like this.

Wardrobe summer.jpg


They're what I'll be trying to limit myself to as of Monday. Of course I can "borrow" from the group either side if I need to. Rather than wait for cooler weather before sorting the other clothes, I decided to try and do them all now. That's equally lean for daily clothes.

Wardrobe cool weather.jpg


Of course I have the walking clothes, and the scruffs for doing dirty work in too. I also have set aside three pairs of shorts to double up with the daily decent in summer, and three pairs of jersey shorts plus three full length legwear for use as loungewear. There's about a dozen T-shirts in the drawer, which are for loungewear/sleeping in, doubling with shorts, or wearing as an undergarment in cooler weather. I'm also going to leave a couple of extra pullovers and a fleece as additional throw on layers should they be needed.

Everything else (discards and reserves) is all in one big pile at the moment, and still needs sorting through. I'll be sure to hang onto a few reserves in case this doesn't work out for any reason, but hopefully this will do away with the feeling of having way too much, and yet still be functional and sensible for daily living and health restrictions.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
I have a wash and wear wardrobe. Everything I wear will fit in one load of wash.

I tend split my laundry by colours. Black, blue and green, red and brown, grey and tan, and whites. It's not often I'll wear anything that would go in one wash.

How wash loads will work out from the reduced wardrobe, is yet to be discovered. I might have to combine some colours that I don't really want to. That might have contributed to how I ended up with so many clothes in the first place.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
Revisiting this thread, as the wardrobe just got blitzed.

I went up a waist size in trousers, and this escalated to a full overhaul of everything. Out with everything on the tight side, and no longer relevant to my "retired" (due to disability) lifestyle. Some stuff survived the cull, but every category received something new.

I didn't particularly keep track of each garment type in terms of specific numbers, but when I'd finished slinging everything out, and replacing with new, I discovered everything seemed to fall quite close to seven.

For example:
7 heavyweight trousers (cords/moleskins/jeans) for winter, and 4 summerweight trousers (chinos and convertibles) plus 3 pairs of chino shorts.

When I had a rough count up of the tops this evening, I was pleasantly surprised to see they were in the same ballpark.

8 polo shirts and short sleeve henleys
6 long sleeved tees and henleys
9 short sleeved shirt
9 regular weight long sleeved shirts
8 winter weight long sleeved shirts
7 v-neck pullovers and cardigans
5 1/2 zip or button sweatshirts
5 lightweight fleeces

The minimal wardrobe idea didn't work for me fully, as health challenges limit laundry frequency, and I kept reintroducing stuff I'd put to one side. However, it was interesting to see that I intuitively gravitated to a moderate number of everything when it was time to update everything.

Irrespective of the time of year, I've roughly 7 legwear options and two to three times that in tops available to work through between laundry cycles. I guess all I really need to do, is keep stashing out of season clothing under the bed, and the wardrobe won't seem so excessively packed after all.
 
Another trap is duplication of function, so short sleeve shirts, polo shirts, and smart tees, all need to be lumped together for this exercise. I've currently got 5 short sleeve shirts, 6 polo shirts, and 4 smart tees. Then there's 7 long sleeved tees, 10 long sleeved casual shirts, and 10 smarter office type shirts (I don't work now).

I'll pick 7 short sleeve, and 7 long. That's two weeks of shirts, tees, and polos - assuming I don't need to change shirts during the day. 14 out of 42.

Long trousers will be similarly grouped. I've got 3 smart pairs (not including suits, which are exempt from this), 4 chinos, 5 jeans, 3 canvas cargo pants (from when I was working), and 3 hiking trousers (from when I wals more active).

I'll start with 6 - one smart, two chino, two jeans (one decent, one battered), and one hiking type. 6 out of 18.

Shorts. There's 4 sports type, 3 cargo, 3 jersey, and 2 cut off jeans. I do wear the jersey ones as loungewear, but I'll add one each of the others too. 6 out of 12

So for summer outerwear, that's just 26 items out of 72. That might still sound like a lot, but health means I'm limited on laundry frequency, and impairs coordination, so I spill stuff a lot. That's also the total for all three grades of clother from my first post, including for any social events that might happen whenever lockdown is lifted, or light gardening/repairs etc. I think that's a sensible yet challenging start point. It might be easy, it might not.
When I saw the title minimalist wardrobe I imagined the type where a guy only has six of one kind of shirt, e.g white long sleeve and 5 pairs of jeans all the same. Same thing every day. Apparently others who have gone this route say its great. Easy to decide what to wear, inexpensive, and no one seems to notice the difference. I just might give this a try one of these days. Good luck with your journey and yes, we all have too many clothes.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
When I saw the title minimalist wardrobe I imagined the type where a guy only has six of one kind of shirt, e.g white long sleeve and 5 pairs of jeans all the same. Same thing every day. Apparently others who have gone this route say its great. Easy to decide what to wear, inexpensive, and no one seems to notice the difference. I just might give this a try one of these days. Good luck with your journey and yes, we all have too many clothes.

That would be way too minimal for me, but I do see the appeal. A few years ago I had a job with issued clothing, which was cargo trousers with a shirt bearing the company logo. Grab and go certainly made life easier at 5:30am every day.

I do like to have a bit of choice over how I want to look though. The new clothes line up is probably just over half what it was before, and once that's split down further into seasons (just summer/winter), it's very manageable, but I can still comfortably go two weeks between laundry days if I need to. Formal wear is completely absent from the new line up, but that's not something I have call for these days. Overall, its a mix of casual, smart casual, and walking gear, which is pretty much all I need, as I'm either at home, seeing friends and family (either for a meal etc, or at their house), or out for a stroll/waddle.
 
Downsized clothing this past year. Summer wardrobe is typically shorts and a polo or short sleeve shirt. 4 pairs shorts, 4 polos, 4 short sleeve shirts. Flip flops or boat shoes.

Winter is chinos and long sleeve shirts. A fleece jacket for warmth. A barn coat for most days and a heavy wool long coat for bitter days. 2 pair of chords for bitter cold days. 2 pair of lace up shoes.

Work is same winter shoes, 4 pair dress pants, same long sleeve or short sleeve shirts.

A single belt. A summer Panamanian hat, 2 winter flat hats.

Will add a suit soon, expecting a wedding and a couple of funerals.

Mostly that is the entire wardrobe. Was easy to do but expensive. I lost 55 pounds, down almost 3 sizes so didn't have a choice. Decided to simplify in the process. Don't mind doing laundry a couple days a week. Find it easier and far less stressed.
 

AimlessWanderer

Remember to forget me!
Downsized clothing this past year. Summer wardrobe is typically shorts and a polo or short sleeve shirt. 4 pairs shorts, 4 polos, 4 short sleeve shirts. Flip flops or boat shoes.

Winter is chinos and long sleeve shirts. A fleece jacket for warmth. A barn coat for most days and a heavy wool long coat for bitter days. 2 pair of chords for bitter cold days. 2 pair of lace up shoes.

Work is same winter shoes, 4 pair dress pants, same long sleeve or short sleeve shirts.

A single belt. A summer Panamanian hat, 2 winter flat hats.

Will add a suit soon, expecting a wedding and a couple of funerals.

Mostly that is the entire wardrobe. Was easy to do but expensive. I lost 55 pounds, down almost 3 sizes so didn't have a choice. Decided to simplify in the process. Don't mind doing laundry a couple days a week. Find it easier and far less stressed.

Congratulations on the weight loss. Yes, the bank account has certainly had a kicking in putting together the new wardrobe, but has been well worth it. Not just in terms of practicality in getting clothing choices that fit, but also the feel good factor of shedding the old active/working skin, and adopting a new retired (albeit through disability) skin.

Our weather is typically cooler, and so even in the warmer six months, full length trousers and short sleeves are still needed. I'd say shorts have about two to three months use here, but are broken up with periods of long trousers in between.

I'm still in the final changes of the wardrobe here, as one order is late. Very late. Plus I keep getting sporadic notifications of an item being out of stock and refunded. This has left me down one pair of chinos, and one pair of shorts so far, with potentially other items to be refunded too. As such, I've just added a couple of pairs of cheap lightweight jeans to the array.

I have had notification that a delivery is due to me, either today or Monday, for a couple of pairs of brogues, which will go well with almost any of the new jeans, chinos, cords or moleskins I've added. There's a couple more short sleeve shirts in that package too.

So, I've now finished spending, at least until that last order is resolved one way or the other. If more items are cancelled off, I may have a couple more to source next month. I'll update again when I know the outcome.
 
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