Clothes no more

This weekend I did something I had never done before: I actually went through my clothes and got rid of a few!

I've always been a nostalgic pack rat. For the longest time I would keep clothes just because they reminded of previous (good) times when I wore them. Which means there have been times I've worn ugly clothes from the 90's because they remind me of high school. Well, that and part of me was proud that I could wear them again, as I gained 40 lbs at the end of college and only returned to my high school weight in the last few years. Not only that, but I "collected" a lot of shirts as well just because they were free or geeky. My many trips to comic conventions gave me free schwag that most people wouldn't be caught dead in (anyone want to wear a 2005 "War of the Worlds" t-shirt?). For a while there I also collected Hard Rock Cafe shirts from the cities I visited; it got to the point where almost half my wardrobe was Hard Rock shirts.

I just didn't get rid of clothes. My family would find ways to quietly remove clothes from my wardrobe but occasionally I would ask where a certain Tommy Hilfiger shirt or ratty comic book T-shirt went and catch them after the fact. They learned to be more creative after that. One of my best birthday presents was a blanket made from my favorite college t-shirts (mostly frat shirts) which weren't exactly proper attire for work.

Anyways, the past few months I have been working on new outfits that I enjoy wearing. After a few rounds of laundry I realized that I was wearing roughly the same 10 outfits (mixing and matching pants and sweater combos) and that some of the stuff in my closet hadn't been worn in years. So I dumped all my clothes on the floor and proceeded to throw away all the shirts that just didn't match my new outfits (or were so stained it was pathetic). It didn't take long to fill an entire trash bag. I then drove 30 miles to the local Goodwill and bid goodbye to the clothes without a second thought. This was a first for me, a surprisingly it was easy than I expected. Who know, maybe in the next year I will be donating my current outfits after buying all new ones...

And somewhere out there someone now is showing off their new-to-them Iron Man t-shirt (or maybe a No Fear shirt). Hope they have as good of times with their new clothes as I did when I wore them!