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I've tracked every piece of clothing I've worn for three years (2021)

139 points by gaws

by n4r9

13 subcomments

I 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.

by jsnell

2 subcomments

> The 90 euro Converse sneakers and the 30 euro Mywears have a similar CPW of 0.87 euros and 0.70 €, respectively. Their effective cost is roughly the same, which means that walking around in the cheap Mywears is roughly as expensive as walking around in Converses. In this case, money buys quality, at least when measured by durability.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the author spending a lot of money on clothes and replacing their clothes at a high velocity. If buying stuff makes you happy, buy stuff. I've certainly spent a lot of money on board games I don't play enough. Tracking the cost per use seems like a good way to control the habit.
But this paragraph makes it seem as if the author can't make themselves actually admit that's the reason, and need to find an excuse for it. No, sorry, cheap sneakers do not wear out after 43 uses or expensive ones after 104 uses. At that point I'd persinally be classifying them as indistinguishable from new. Like, at best the author got bored of them after that many uses.

by InMice

7 subcomments

Interesting 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.
Another thing Im doing is switching to 100% cotton (or just no plastic fibers). I love the breathability and light feel of cotton shirts.

by Molitor5901

2 subcomments

Wow. I buy one pair of jeans per year, I now have three pairs. This year I've bought exactly 2 t-shirts on vacation in Spain. I cannot imagine spending so much on clothing, that just seems.. overkill. Where do you put it all???

by readthenotes1

0 subcomment

28 wears for an undershirt? I have many that are over a decade old. I have a feeling that the author and I live dramatically different lifestyles.

by cafard

4 subcomments

I 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.

by cainxinth

0 subcomment

I tracked the clothes I wear while cycling last fall and winter so I would know what to wear given the weather. I record temperature, humidity, windspeed, and level of sunshine. It’s been very useful. Even after years of outdoor biking, I still sometimes get fooled by a bright, dry, windy, 65 degree day and forget how chilly they can be, but my spreadsheet will remind me.

by herunan

0 subcomment

Love it.
This is such a fun way of visualising your everyday life. Of course, being data-driven may not always be the right answer for everything, but it will at least help you make more conscious decisions.
I can guarantee I have a blazer or two in my wardrobe with a much higher Cost Per Wear than the author's ones due to lack of use.

by tetris11

1 subcomments

Scrolling through this thread, I feel like I am the only one who experienced a web page where the CSS gave me a blank rectangle on the left side, with all the content smushed narrowly to the right.

by dang

0 subcomment

Discussed at the time:
I’ve tracked every piece of clothing I’ve worn for three years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25869464 - Jan 2021 (100 comments)

by terpiljenya

0 subcomment

I did the same thing, tracking my outfits for years, and finally decided to build an app that automatically organizes wardrobe from your photos to make it easier. Check it out if you're interested: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sparkly-personal-stylist-ai/id...

by androiddrew

0 subcomment

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.

by egypturnash

0 subcomment

> Someone once said their goal is to have a wardrobe with nothing but favorite clothes. That makes sense not only from a value perspective, but in light of my data, that may also be the best alternative in terms of cost performance.
My clothes-buying strategy has settled on "if it doesn't look great on me in the fitting room then it doesn't come home with me". Which is pretty similar. You can still end up with things that rarely get worn for other reasons but it's a good filter.

by koolba

2 subcomments

> In some cases, buying cheap is provenly more expensive
There’s an inherent bias in being willing to throw away a cheap pair of shoes that are a bit worn and stuffed. But not being willing to toss a $500 pair of Bruno Maglis with the same level of wear. That leads to the latter being worn further and driving it down till it eventually passes the cheap stuff.

by Animats

1 subcomments

The first app for that: [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDubWJU0aU

by markhahn

2 subcomments

Oh, thank you for the validation! For three years I've been measuring, weighing, logging all my nails and hair and poop, and I thought I was alone!

by hilux

0 subcomment

What an interesting analysis. It actually got me thinking about which of my clothes I actually wear, and which should probably be divested.

by nacho-daddy

1 subcomments

I love that the author took the time to collect and plot his own data. And this was 2020? In 3 years my washing machine should be able to do this.

by wakawaka28

2 subcomments

Tracking 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.

by timnetworks

1 subcomments

I live in america and my jeans are $20 and if something happens to them it's cheaper to get a new pair :) :( :)

by grahamj

0 subcomment

This is great, well done :)

by deathanatos

1 subcomments

20 to 25 uses for an undershirt seems terrible. Once per week for church and it is worn out in 6 months. Heaven forbid you dress formally for work and it is gone after a month of use…? (spread out by the other shirts in the inventory, but still.)
An average of 102 USD for a pair of shorts¹ is something else though, and like other people in the thread note, … Larry, I'm on DuckTales. (171 USD, real / pair of shoes.) (Board member/CEO/VP/etc., if you're curious what profession gets one such a lifestyle.)
I … I struggle to find enough time in my life to keep the fuel efficiency spreadsheet for my car up to date. (Though even that did reveal some findings: we get better fuel economy when the bike rack isn't attached. Not a terribly surprising conclusion, and the difference really wasn't that great.) I'd like to have this for some things in my life, … but it's never clear whether it's worth it.
Especially for clothing. This tells you post facto whether a purchasing decision was good, or not. What good does that do me…? Unless it is something I'll purchase again, but I feel like for clothing that is rare to begin with, and even where I do, it's dominated by more mundane filters like "is there even another supplier that I know of in this area?" Shoes³ are a good example: most stores' stock is so utterly pathetic that the answer is "the store has exactly 1 pair in your size" (and it's hideous, or doesn't actually fit, etc.) (Same problem with dress shirts, jeans. I have gotten the impression that this is mostly a me problem — my build is suffering reverse economies of scale as most of America outweighs me substantially.)
At purchase time is when I need the data … and there, reviews are terrible. I'd truly love to ban reviewers who fail to give me the trifecta of "what size are you, what size did you purchase, and how did it fit?", esp. on Amazon. "It fits" does little good if I have no idea what size you are. Did you buy "your typical size" or did you buy based on your measurements? Etc. Lots of reviews, but next to no data. Compound with false advertising (e.g., "Silk" items made of polyester: my top hit on "silk pajamas²" is 95%/5% poly/span, i.e., 0% silk, and has silk in the title; multiple material listings that contradict each other etc.)
¹7 shorts at an inventory value of 535 EUR. 535/7 = 76.42 EUR. 76.42 EUR to USD (at today's exchange rates; this is a bit wrong I know) => 85.31 USD. Adjust for inflation (the article is (2021)) => 102.66 USD
²I choose silk as, given its luxuriousness, it is more susceptible to this. If you ask for polyester, I'm pretty sure you'll get true to the word there. With silk in particular, there's also a lot of preying on consumers probably not understanding the difference between silk and satin.
³Ironically one of my most recent shoe purchases was via Amazon, and a real risk given how low the price was. Astoundingly they fit not too bad (not perfect) but the low cost means they definitely have a low CPW, and they've seen a fair bit of use with little degradation. The old adage about the better pair of boots … IDK. I'll pay up for shoes, but that pair is providing a stark counter-example to "you get what you pay for". But, I have a mid-range pair from Amazon too that degraded after a few wears. (I repaired it, but still. It was much too young, and it was basically that the lining was not well attached. But it makes me still wary that the good pair was one-off stroke of luck that I can't replicate.)