Spent part of the afternoon yesterday finally emptying out the closets, which have accrued old clothes as stale bread accrues blue mold. Threw out a bunch of tired stuff, moved the winter outfits to a closet in the other room, and gathered the summer stuff in the bedroom closet. In doing so, I freed up a vast number of clothes hangers, which before the cleaning frenzy were in short supply.
Huzzah! Now there’s room for more second-hand clothes from My Sister’s Closet! Actually, the other day my friend Joan and I dropped by the Nordstrom’s Rack outlet. Though neither of us bought anything, I saw several goodies that I’d like to try on. But I suspect my frugal impulses may get in the way.
Here’s the thing: I tend to buy expensive clothes that are well made (or were, back in the day). These last (or used to last) forever and a day. Some of the stuff that closet harbors has been in there since before I was divorced…and that was a good 20 years ago. Matter of fact, as we scribble I’m wearing a shirt that dates back to said era.
The frugality of this strategy is obvious, no?
Well. Except of course if you buy clothes more than once every 20 years…
As time has passed and American clothiery has been shipped offshore, quality has slipped (we could say “plummeted”) to the point where even high-rent shirts, pants, and skirts not only do not last 20 years, they barely last 20 months.
So in amongst the…uhm…classics are any number of latter-day items from Talbot’s, Dillard’s, Chico’s, J.Jill, and of course that old standby Costco. Rags, all of it rags: faded, stretched, shrunken, frayed, and raveled.
But oooh, how can you throw out perfectly fine rags that could be used for…for gardening? And hiking! And housecleaning! And of course for the ever-present house painting!
Throwing this junk out is difficult. Very difficult. Even painful. How can a person get rid of a raggedy old shirt that she could still wear? A lot of raggedy old shirts, for hevinsake!
And therein lie the two problems: the closet is full of perfectly fine superbly made clothing, only slightly out of date, and perfectly fine gardening clothes, albeit a shade on the threadbare side.
Maybe, in an era when only the most unaffordably expensive clothes are made to last anymore, maybe it would actually be more frugal — or at least less crazy — to buy outfits that you have no intention of keeping more than a few months. At the end of every season, throw the damn stuff out.
That seems so wasteful, it frosts my cookies. But you might spend less money — or at least no more — and from season to season you might have cuter clothes. And you’d have to buy fewer coat hangers.
What think you, Dear Reader? Buy expensive clothes and make them last forever? Or buy cheap stuff and churn it every season? Which is smarter? Or, conversely, which is dumber?
But if you buy new clothes each year/season, you have to spend more time shopping…
I have the same conundrum, although it’s not just driven by frugality. It seems wasteful from so many angles to turn over one’s closet regularly. There are the environmental costs (growing cotton with lots and lots of chemicals, and burning oil transporting the raw materials and cloth to and from the factories) and the human rights (unsafe sweat shops in SE Asia) issues to consider, too. However, I work in an industry where I need to look “respectable” at the office, so I must maintain a work wardrobe that conforms to this nebulous standard.
Over the past three weeks I’ve done my annual shopping trips to Nordstrom and Macy’s to get new work separates, so I’m also cleaning out my closets and drawers these days. I do have some really old stuff that I’m finally parting with, such as a mohair blend sweater bought at Express in my last year of high school (which makes it about 30 years old! Yikes!). I tend to buy well-made clothing, too, because I really hate to shop so I want things that will last as long as possible. If I could keep my weight more stable instead of yo-yoing up and down I could do even less shopping. (Getting adequate exercise in my week and stopping myself from stress eating/drinking are perpetual self-improvement projects. *sigh*)
I think that’s the variable you’re missing in your evaluation of “buy to last” or “buy cheap.” How much do you enjoy shopping and how often do you want to do it?
A year or so ago, the NY Times ran an article reporting that the clothing industry has developed a strategy that actively promotes customers’ buying junk clothes, fully intending to throw them out and buy new after just a couple of wearings. It’s called “Fast Fashion”; Forever 21 bases its business model on this scheme. Here’s an article to that effect: http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2012/09/21/the-wasteful-culture-of-forever-21-hm-and-fast-fashion
But yes. It’s not only exploitive — same as planned obsolescence for cars and large appliances is exploitive — it’s incredibly irresponsible. It’s environmentally destructive, and it teaches young people profligacy. Greed and stupidity are roughly synonymous, I guess…
I’m a buy things that last kind of person, so for the most part my wardrobe is heavy on the classics. I’ve sadly had to move some of my college stuff to goodwill though because I’m no longer an adorable teen/early 20-something. The weird thing is that when I hold on to stuff long enough, some of it comes back in.
You must not be as hard on your raggedy t-shirts as I am– It seems like just when a cleaning rag is truly tiny pieces, a new ancient sleeping shirt is ready to take its place, and a new raggedy t-shirt is ready to become a sleeping shirt.
Yes…that style redux business IS a phenomenon. And have you noticed that the 1970s have returned to interior design? A Crate & Barrel catalog looks like it was printed in 1971, with all those brown and green and orange colors and minimalist pieces of furniture! They’re carrying dishes that look like low-end knock-offs of my Heath set…which, BTW, I still use every day.
I spend a lot lf money, but maybe I buy fewer expensive items, because I never buy anything and forget I have it. If, by some really odd chance, I buy something and have not used it within a month, I remember to return it. I’ve personally found that less is better, when it comes to belongings.
Possibly. My policy is to throw out things I haven’t used in a year. It certainly is true that less is better!
The clothing industry’s attempt to get people to buy more and more clothing by engineering stuff to wear out quickly does nothing to help in that department. Even if you have only what you need in the closet, when you have to churn your wardrobe constantly because stuff falls apart or doesn’t fit properly, you ultimately end up spending a LOT more than if you could buy a limited number of things but know they’ll last several years.
I hate shopping. Hate, hate, hate shopping. Fortunately I work at home so it doesn’t matter what I look like.
I do like poking around in thrift stores, where I sometimes find extremely well-made items (100% wool sweaters et al.) that I can keep for ages.
On the whole I’d rather buy decently made stuff and not have to keep replacing it. But again: I don’t have to shop that much, so I don’t really have a dog in this hunt.
Hmmm….I’ve noticed clothing quality and durability have taken a hit and yet the prices have went up….significantly. Some time ago I began going to Goodwill and Salvation Army to purchase “work atire”…that is clothing to wear when working on property that is more of a tool than a fashion staement. I can get top rate, name brand cargo pants and shorts for $2-3. I just tore a pair of these and requested the wife repair them. She responded that at $2 in cost it really wasn’t worth fixing them ….BUT shared she’d rather save the buttons and zippers for future projects. I’ll tellya seen these same cargo pants in the store for $40. I share your pain with “letting things go”. I don’t know if it’s a “hoarder instinct” or just thrift but I just struggle with letting things go to the landfill…seems like such a waste….
No question that these days stuff found in thrift stores is often noticeably better in quality than new stuff. One reason, where women’s clothes are concerned, may be that you can buy more expensive clothes second-hand than you could possibly afford if the were new. However, I think even good stuff is now made in China — quality overall is very low.
I am a professional, sort middle aged woman who likes to be classically well-dressed. I do not like most of the fashions in the department stores for women my age, so I shop at the thrift stores and consignment stores in my area–which is an affluent retirement community. Folks can’t take it with them, so it ends up in my closet instead. And the best part is that, at yet, no one has come up to me in public to ask for her skirt back!
Yeah, my Old Navy shirts get holes in them pretty quickly, but I care less because I spent maybe $10 on them. There’s one that I wear (only around the house) that’s so raggedy, I can — and have — accidentally stuck my arm through one of the holes instead of the actual arm hole.
That said, some of the stuff we’ve bought at Macy’s lasts. I’m sure part of that is only wearing the raggedy stuff around the house. But some of the shirts have been through the wash a lot and are still going strong.
That said, a pair of linen pants that I bought from the Gap last spring were already pilling in the seat and thighs by the end of the summer. And a nice shirt that I bought at New York & Co started pilling pretty quickly too.
So I guess I’ll just have to try to shop for quality and be thankful I don’t actually go out much.