Clothes - how old is too old?

I use my dossing about the home clothes for wombling (group litter picking) and wear a thick pair of joggers as it doesn't scratch the skin with brambles and stinging nettles. All get thrown in the wash including undies for the 15 min wash programme I have on washer, whilst I shower.
 
lol i've got t-shirts 10-15 yrs old i've got a lee corduroy shirt thats 30 yrs old .. if it still fit's with no holes it's still good .. then again i have just bought 2 new padded lumberjack shirts ..great for extra warmth on the bike :)
 
I've got some stuff in my wardrobe that is probably 20 years old, it doesn't fit (at the moment as I've put on weight) but it's things like favourite t-shirts.

Generally I throw clothes out when either they don't fit, or are worn/damaged and have no further use (I keep old jeans/t-shirts and tops for things like painting/gardening where they're likely to get knackered fast).
i loathe clothes shopping, especially as it always seems no two stores quite stick to the same sizing and some stores don't even stick to the same sizing within their own range. The only thing I find worse than clothes shopping is shoe shopping because none of the highstreet stores actually seems to carry size 12's, let alone 12 wide or 13's most of the time*. it seems that every time I go to buy some I end up half killing myself going around all the shoe sellers in the surrounding towns, then having to order the ones I liked the look of from their online store as they didn't have anything over a size 10 in stock, only to find it doesn't fit.

On a tangentially related note, I was popping out to do some bits in the garden and realised my mobile was low on charge, no problem I thought, I've got powerbank and I saw a my old bumbag in the bottom of a drawer with some old console bits.
I was oddly saddened to realise the bum bag that always seemed to be loose when I wore it, doesn't actually fit me nearly 30 years later.:)

*With Clarks I'm usually a 12 wide, or 13, but can squeeze into a 12 depending on type of shoe and style.
 
I have T shirts I bought at 16 that still fit me and haven't got faded or worn too much aside from the odd snagged thread. Cost about £4 a shirt then and still comfy as ever.
 
I put a new tee shirt on today which has to be about 14 yrs old - when I did part time work after i retired I had to go to Oxford to pick up stuff and the company gave me one of their tee shirts - Good quality and on back was their name and it said it had been stolen and had phone number on as well.
Sort of old Fruit of loom stuff when it was good stuff.
 
shroomz said:
What do you do with all the old ones? Or is your house basically just a fabric warehouse :D?
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Funnily enough we had a clear out this weekend. Altogether for me and my wife, I ended up taking 8 bags of clothes to the tip.

It was about 80% my wife's stuff to be fair and a lot of it was from before our daughter was born (she's 4).

Calculating how much I actually buy, it probably averages about 8 t shirts a year, 2-3 pairs of jeans / pants and 2-3 bits of knitwear. I wouldn't say that's a lot actually?

I probably averaged more for the couple of years prior to covid as work moved to a permanent smart casual dress code, so I wore clothes far more frequently than I would when I had work attire for the office.

I'm curious to know how frequently people wash clothes? I tend to wash t shirts after 1 wear, maybe 2 at a push. That's normal right? Doing so means they tend to lose their shape after 6 months, even when washed on 30c and not tumble dried.
 
Main criteria I have for throwing out clothes:
  • Damage (holes in it etc). Cheaper items I might throw out even for missing buttons rather than sewing a new button on.
  • Too small, this could be either trousers from years ago that are too tight, or tops that have shrunk slightly in the wash (I have an abnormally long torso / short legs for my height - 5'10" but only 28" leg). An annoying problem I have is a lot of t-shirts / polo shirts are too short, raise my arms in the arm and it's showing my belly etc.
  • Lower quality item where I now have a better quality item. A good example is a while back I threw out old work shirts with low cotton content having bought 100% cotton.
  • If I look at the item and think, I'm never going to wear that, it's embarrassing (like some silly design). I threw out all my pants that weren't boxer shorts at one point.
Age isn't really a factor directly, although it can contribute to the above (older items are more likely to be damaged / small / low quality / embarrassing).
I still have some clothes from the 00s, e.g. a band t-shirt, couple of better quality items I bought in New York etc. By chance I'm actually wearing a Ralph Lauren polo I bought in Macys in 2008.

I do have too many clothes however, I went through a phase of buying 'bargain' suits so I have like 10-12 different suits, some don't fit that well, I even have a white suit which is ridiculous, bought it because it was cheap but it's hard to pull off a white suit. So they are taking up a lot of wardrobe space.
Likewise I'm quite partial to polo shirts, got a whole drawer full of them which is a bit pointless really.
 
DanTheMan said:
Funnily enough we had a clear out this weekend. Altogether for me and my wife, I ended up taking 8 bags of clothes to the tip.

It was about 80% my wife's stuff to be fair and a lot of it was from before our daughter was born (she's 4).

Calculating how much I actually buy, it probably averages about 8 t shirts a year, 2-3 pairs of jeans / pants and 2-3 bits of knitwear. I wouldn't say that's a lot actually?

I probably averaged more for the couple of years prior to covid as work moved to a permanent smart casual dress code, so I wore clothes far more frequently than I would when I had work attire for the office.

I'm curious to know how frequently people wash clothes? I tend to wash t shirts after 1 wear, maybe 2 at a push. That's normal right? Doing so means they tend to lose their shape after 6 months, even when washed on 30c and not tumble dried.
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That all sounds reasonable to me. I think OcUK is full of denigrates wearing ancient clothing that lost its shape 15 years before.

I wash my t-shirts after 1 wash, though I consider 1 wash something like, wearing it for a few hours one day and a few hours the next. If it's had a full day of wear then I would definitely wash it.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
That all sounds reasonable to me. I think OcUK is full of denigrates wearing ancient clothing that lost its shape 15 years before.

I wash my t-shirts after 1 wash, though I consider 1 wash something like, wearing it for a few hours one day and a few hours the next. If it's had a full day of wear then I would definitely wash it.
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Is this the fashion police out now?
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I'm not the fashion police. I've refrained on commenting on literally every other post in this thread. But there's no way people's t-shirts are lasting 15 years and retaining their shape. It's creep - you just haven't noticed they aren't OK any more.
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How can a tshirt lose its shape? It's a tshirt, the shape is pretty universal isn't it? It's kind of tubular and fits over your kind of tubular torso :p

I'm genuinely curious how you'd decide that a tshirt has lost its shape?
 
FoxEye said:
How can a tshirt lose its shape? It's a tshirt, the shape is pretty universal isn't it? It's kind of tubular and fits over your kind of tubular torso :p

I'm genuinely curious how you'd decide that a tshirt has lost its shape?
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They can lose shape by not following the care label, ramming too much washing into the washer at once, pegging out tops on the bottom (mum pegs them on the armpit and flicks them over later)and using too big hangers for them. For example, if constantly hang a t-shirt on a jacket hanger, it will stretch.
 
I am in camp keep forever or until they fall apart, only buy walking gear new like columbia ect the rest is either gifts or charity shops, in Yorkshire visiting folks so got an Indian cotton shirt for 3 quid yesterday, probebly highly unfashionable and dated but I like linen shirts and this sort of stuff

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FoxEye said:
How can a tshirt lose its shape? It's a tshirt, the shape is pretty universal isn't it? It's kind of tubular and fits over your kind of tubular torso :p

I'm genuinely curious how you'd decide that a tshirt has lost its shape?
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They aren't just a tube though. I'd challenge you to make a t-shirt using a tubular piece of material...it just wouldn't be right. They have a shape to them, much like different shapes of formal shirt. You get all these different fits: regular, tailored, skinnny, muscle fit. T-shirts probably fall into the regular category for older chaps, but that doesn't mean they're just a tube.

It's very obvious for me in trousers, at least, when they lose their shape. For me, they always stretch at the knees and then I know they're more than just worn in.
 
I usually just replace clothes when they look knackered - either lost their shape or showing wear around the cuffs etc. I certainly expect to get at least around 3 years out of most things, and still wear at least one item of clothing (an old jumper) that I've had for probably ~15 (only for lounging around my flat, but it's still in decent shape).
 
I have a wardrobe clear out every 6 months, where I go through everything and if something has shrunk in the wash, faded colours, has worn out etc. etc. it gets taken to the clothes recycling bin at my local tesco.

Started this a few years ago after amassing so many clothes that I didn't have space for new ones and didn't want to wear any of my current stuff as it fit into the categories mentioned above.

Also, if I haven't worn it in 6 months (and it isn't a jumper/jacket/jeans suit type item) it goes as well.

People horde too much and should just stop clinging onto memories.

Also due to two nasty injuries in the last 5 years i've had to go from a Large to a XL/XXL then back down again so i've had two big clear outs :cry:
 
Hate clothes shopping. I replace them when they start getting holes, when that happens then they become my jeans for wearing round the house.

I've recently started only buying walking trousers though since I do a good bit of walking.
 
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