Literally what everyone should be doing now for the environment. Clothes waste is a huge problem. The fact that people throw away stuff that can still be sold at thrift stores is appalling. Understandable if your body shape has changed or something, but “getting bored” of clothes is indefensible. This extends to people “getting bored” of phones and cars too, which is terrible.
Also: I’m in this picture and my wife hates me for it. I have something from 25 years ago thats still wearable.
OP’s post has also missed the category of “sleep clothes”.
If your body shape has changed, donate your old clothes! My wife lost a bunch of weight because medical reasons, and she recently went through her entire wardrobe; I dropped five 30-gallon bags of perfectly serviceable clothes off at a nonprofit thrift shop.
That’s what I did. I hope they don’t end up in a landfill in Africa :(
That’s part of the fun?
30y/o.
I have bought a grand total of 3 brand new pieces of clothing in my whole life(not including underwear/socks). Every single other piece was either given to me for xmas/birthday/random gifts or bought from thrift stores. Anything I can’t wear anymore has either been donated back to thrift or cut into rags myself.
I’ve also directly worked in a thirft store, where anything unsellable get tossed into ‘rag out’ where it’s donated to a company that turns it into cheap bags of shop rags: so even stuff that’s falling apart is still worth donating.
In England they tell us not to donate anything that we wouldn’t consider worthy of gifting to someone. They have to use volunteer time to soft/sort (and I guess clean) all items. If it’s not something anyone will buy then best to take it directly to clothes recycling drop offs rather than charity shops.
(and I guess clean)
May be a difference between regions, but thrift doesn’t clean clothes around me. You’re expected to donate clean clothes; But if it’s visually in such rough shape that it needs to be washed first, it’s ‘rag out’, otherwise it goes on the sales floor. Laundry is a huge expense for a nonprofit; instead, they expect you to wash it yourself before wearing it.
I’m not aware of any seprate clothes recycling facilities around me, and can’t find one with a quick search. Just the typical thrifts.
My friends and I have been doing clothing swaps with the local femme community and honestly its been a huge game changer for closet refreshing! We had like 260 people come through last time and anything left after the swap is done is donated to local youth/addiction/women’s centres :)
I’ve gotten some of my favourite outfits from the swap!! And it’s completely free!
That’s such a great idea!
Thanks! Feel free to have your own clothing swaps, the more, the better!
All my homies love sustainability :)
Well, I had 260 people come through me just last night at our emergency church service at midnight that definitely wasn’t a booty call on my congregation
I have a sweater that my grandma got me when I was 7. It’s purple with a handful of printed comic panels featuring Harry, a snow dog. It goes “Harry is a snow dog. Harry is a good dog.” and you can see Harry doing snowboard and stuff.
I am 35 today. It’s worn out a bit but still my dearest, most beloved pajama. It still fits, somehow
Are you a dwarf? XD
It was very baggy back then but today it fits perfectly. Great foresight on her part. Ah, grandmas…
My mind is also reeling at the idea of something fitting you both at ages 7 and 35. I’m roughly 5/3 as tall as I was then and weigh about four times as much. Do you have a pituitary gland?
Do you have a pituitary gland?
It’s in there somewhere, let me take another look
W grandma
I got a pair of 25 year old Chuck Taylors I’ll still wear. I had no idea they came back in style among the Gen z kids until my buddies 12 year old daughter was impressed by them. Lol
I’ve had the soles of a couple pairs of Chucks fixed. One is almost a decade old. I got the leather kind so I can keep repairing them
Those will always be in
I only throw shit out if there are holes or massive stains. I thought everyone was doing that…
This is rag material or clothes for gardening, painting, etc.
No
There’s no point to discard something that is still useful.
Clutter.
Clutter is a slur invented by big minimalism to sell more less.
I love you
Welcome to Costco
<3
You have never lived with a hoarder…
Yeah that works until you have a stack of 20 pizza boxes you’re saving “just in case.”
Why is everything either 0% or full tilt with some of you folks?
Throw your trash away, keep the things you like. For fuck’s sake. Judgement exists.
Used pizza boxes attract ants. They are net-negative usefulness.
They’re useful for putting down before an oil change. But that’s like, one every six months or so. Not 20.
Could just use any old cardboard for that. Pop open your recycle bin and just grab whatever box you broke down recently.
Pizza boxes are a bad example, they are compostable
You can make great papier mâché out of cardboard
Better solution for that is not to get new shit when you don’t need any
Yeah, when I turned 18 I just went out and bought everything I’d need for the next 60 years or so. Doesn’t everyone do this?
That would honestly be awesome. Me, I just buy stuff as the need arises
Thanks for the idea :3
Well, how else am I supposed to maintain my anxiety and anger?
You don’t have to keep buying new shit all the time. If you keep your old, still working stuff then you don’t need to buy new stuff
I can’t remember the last time I bought something just to replace and throw out a perfectly good item. That’s not how clutter originates.
I really don’t know the last time I got rid of an article of clothing besides shredded socks. I like this post.
Socks make excellent dipstick wipers, then once well impregnated with oil, they’re good for lubing bike chains
And once they’re 51% oil, they’re self-lubricating cum socks.
And when they are so full of dried cum that you can’t bend them any more, they make excellent roof shingles
Omg… I remember fixing my bike chain in the freezing winter. Would have been perfect.
I just went to the thrift store last month for clothes. And this is absolutely correct. The entire store was huge, and then there’s two racks for men lol.
Something interesting I noticed is most of the men’s clothes are nice shirts. Button downs, dress shirts, polos, all sorts of different fabrics, there was even a wedding shirt in there. Not a lot of tshirts, unless they’re made of something different.
My theory is the men’s clothes that ends up in thrift stores are the nice clothes given to them as gifts, or the wife found it and added it to her bag of clothes to donate.
Or stuff someone had to buy for some occasion
Buy for an occasion, change body shape, donate, repeat…
Either that or there’s old people clothes because the guy died.
Shit, TIL I’m a man.
Ah well, now to pick which hole-ridden shirt will be my pajamas tonight.
Holey shirt.
There’s another aspect of this. Y’all are assuming cycling out your wardrobe regularly is “normal” and men are “abnormal” because they don’t. But the reason women cycle out their wardrobe regularly is not because of some universal law that men ignore, it’s because women go through weight fluctuations that render their old clothes unwearable. You’ll hear a woman talk about losing 30 pounds and having to buy new clothes because of that… the fact that women’s fashion includes a lot of form-fitting items (whereas men’s fashion is often looser or more forgiving) certainly contributes to this as well.
I have some items I’ve had for over 20 years I could still wear, because I haven’t had any significant changes in figure in that time… because I’m a guy.
Yes, as a woman that does not like shopping, I still have to buy clothes more often than my boyfriend. Even with a relatively stable weight (+/- 3 kilos over the years) clothes stretch out and loose form, which makes the fit bad. The shirts that survive are the shirts with a more boyish loose cut, the form-fitting stuff looks bad after a while.
That said, I do put them in the home/nightwear category until significant holes appear or they don’t feel comfy anymore.
I think the more prominent difference is fashion, and the cultural approach to clothing.
Women are expected to “keep up” with the latest trend, and are influenced to dress like the celebrities and influencers they see. When my wife and I go back and look at pictures of ourselvelves, my wife can guess the year by the waistline of the jeans she’s wearing. Meanwhile I’m always there in the same jeans, with the same styles of t-shirts, buttoned-shirts, flannels, or thermal shirts depending on the formality and temperature of the occasion.
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I don’t know if that’s a women thing. I think people with that precision are the minority regardless of gender.
There are people of all genders who do so, but I think society places more pressure on women in particular.
It’s more cultural I’d argue. You can design clothes so that it’s adjustable.
I don’t think women just naturally oscillate between +/- 30 lbs?
Not as a rule but a good chunk do
Don’t lose weight then, so there won’t be need to buy more clothes
I have lots of stuff from my youth as a woman. I still wear my prom dress lol.
Yeah I do this. I never buy clothes myself. Usually kinda just acquire stuff over time. It goes good -> everyday -> work -> rags
Guilty.
The good men’s clothes you find at thrift stores are there because the owner passed away and their next of kin donated them.
Yes, this. That’s why the clothing in op shops are frequently classic, dated styles. Sometimes you get more modern things (maybe a young adult moved out and the parents cleared their old room) but anytime I walk into an open shop, it has ‘estate sale’ vibes.
Another thing i notice is that all of the clothes in my local OP shops are pretty dated, but the women’s section is always ten times larger (or more!) The same is true for places that sell modern, returned goods, too: Women’s clothing gets returned/exchanged at far higher rates than men’s.
So men are better for the environment?
I swear some of my underwear is 50:50 underwear to holes ratio.
Well there’s the leg holes, hole I use to put it on and ofc the peepe hole and poopoo hole.
The …poopoo hole?
You need a hole to poopoo out of. Or what, you’re just poopooing in your pants??
And the big trunk home too. Actually more holes than I remember.
The final use of a piece of clothing is as a wick for a Molotov cocktail.
Donated men’s clothing tends to be dead man’s clothes
I use my scrubs this way. And my jeans. Nothing else really lasts that long and I kinda blame the additional wear and tear from my boobs. I buy thick socks and mend them when they get a hole I guess.
I’ve just accepted wearing my (thick) socks with a hole on the heel… why tf have I never considered mending them‽ I feel a bit (very much) embarrassed about that, and I appreciate the thought. Also excited to realize I can reclaim like 4 pairs of my socks. So thanks for making me feel a little dumb, friend!
I…uh…any time? lol.
I ain’t darning socks. I’mma just wear mismatched socks without holes before they hit the rag bin. And while I will use my own washed wornout underwear for rags, I ain’t no way in hell ever going to use yours.
Signed, Old Man in the forest.
If good mens clothing was that hard to find in thrift stores, we would never have gotten the lyrics:
I wear your grandad’s clothes,
I look incredible.
From what I’ve been seeing in memes recently, I wonder if this is just another shitty thing only seen at Goodwill, the worst thrift store chain ever.
See those lyrics are proof of the lack of selection in men’s clothes.
90% of the donated clothes are something you’d see old people wear. My theory is that this is from families clearing out closets after someone dies
Pretty much. Not that fashionistas aren’t on the lookout for vintage fashion.
Exactly, these just happen to be the clothes that he hadn’t yet worn into oblivion
My husband frequently finds nice things. Not me, it’s 99% shein now.
