My Life in Clothes

I don’t do laundry, and I think this has led to some weird and unanticipated behavior such as clothes hording – not clean clothes mind you, but the dirty ones. Not even dirty clothes really – I have no problem at all putting the obviously dirty ones in the hamper. It is the shirt that I wore for an hour and think, “this still has some life left in it,” and so I hang it on a peg in the bathroom instead of putting it in the laundry. What I would give to be like Popeye or Gilligan, and always wear the same thing – and don’t think I haven’t tried! I have managed to wheedle it down to just a few areas though. I have clothes that I paint in, clothes that I go out in public in, and clothes that I sleep in. I used to have clothes that I worked out in, but I have managed to eliminate this addition to the clothes problem by not working out. If only the other areas of my life in clothes were so easily handled.

So, a typical day goes like this — I put on a clean shirt and clean pair of jeans to take Jack to day-school, 30 minutes later I return and change into painting clothes – the other clothes go on a peg, sometimes but not very often I get a reprieve from the normal day-to-day and go out for lunch, painting clothes go on a peg – the shirt with buttons that I take Jack to day-school in is too nice so out comes a new shirt with some sort of logo or cartoon character screen printed across it (In Denton it is far more common to dress down than to dress up), an hour later the T-shirt goes on a peg, the painting clothes come off , later the switcheroo again when I go to pick up Jack, perhaps another change if we go out to dinner, and then pajamas later on. I didn’t used to wear pajamas, but it helps to get Jack to change and get ready for bed if we all do too — before that I was just as likely to sleep in the clothes I was wearing at the time.

The trouble comes when trying to keep track of who has seen what — maybe I have only worn a shirt for 30 minutes, but the last person that saw it can’t know that. Again, I must lay the blame for this at Jack’s feet because this wasn’t something I used to worry about until I started to think that if I’m not careful the day school is going to take I wear the same shirt for two weeks, and then start treating Jack as some sort of social pariah because he is obviously being raised by Pigpen in some sort of back alley barnyard type environment so why bother? What chance would a kid coming from that have in the real work-a-day suit and tie world anyway? Poor little Jack.

Put a shirt on a peg, put a shirt on a peg, put a shirt on a peg – now; has enough time passed to go back to the first shirt? The funny thing is that I’m not really a metrasexual kind of guy — this is probably why I have the problem in the first place. Perhaps I should’ve paid more attention to my somewhat cute but seemingly socially ambivalent home economics teacher back in high school.

I do other household chores without this weird hoarding – I handle most of the cooking and dishes, and I don’t find myself  hoarding slightly used plates or bowls thinking that perhaps I could squeeze one more light snack out of them. Maybe the problem is there because I see the hamper as some sort of void – once the shirt or pants enter it I don’t know when I’ll get them back, and they always feel different so finding the item is a question. Maybe I need to start doing the laundry, but while I’m not officially prohibited from doing so after my mishaps in that particular part of the household chores I think Jacqi prefers I stay clear. I suppose I could join a nudist colony, but if I did that I would definitely want to work out, and I’m not going to ride an exer-cycle nude at the nude gym that a bunch of other nude guys have already ridden – which means gym clothes and back to square one. It’s a conundrum – Perhaps I should just buy more pegs.