The more I look at my clothing the more I realize how much of it is geared toward living in the Northeast, namely, living through the winter. The winter is inherently gear and clothing intensive; jackets, hats, gloves, fleece, wool socks, down, boots, base layers, and many other items that can really only be used during the winter months. If I have 100 items that include winter items, then in the spring/summer/fall I’ll probably only have 60-70 items because the winter gear is relatively useless when it’s not winter. Once I’ve cataloged everything I’ll have a better idea at what percentage of my stuff is specific to winter but I plan on counting it all toward my 100 items.
Today I decided to look at my sports clothing. I had 36 total items which mostly involved base layers and Techwik shirts. Again I purged a bunch of things without it being too painful, mostly by getting rid of things I don’t use on a daily, weekly, monthly, or even a yearly basis. Here’s a picture of my sports clothing:
Sports Clothing - lots of hats, running shorts, running shirts, and base layers. I probably have twice as many of everything than I could actually use in a given year. I didn't count the race medals or bib numbers in my item list but I recycled the bib numbers and I'm getting rid of the medals (except probably the Boston Marathon), I just couldn't figure out what category to label them under so I put them in my sports clothing picture.
When I first got into road biking (a graduation present from my parents) a good buddy of mine from grad school (a competitive cyclist) gave me a ton of bike jerseys and other assorted biking stuff because he just had a ton of stuff from competing over the years. I gave about half of them away immediately to friends of mine and kept three jerseys for myself. Over the past few years I’ve realized that I don’t really use the bike jerseys. They have cool pockets in the back but typically I bike with a backpack. Hardcore cyclists would balk at this because it drastically increases your drag and weight but I use my bike more for adventuring than anything, so I like to have more than just a few powerbars on me (climbing stuff, beach stuff, work clothes, etc). So those were easy to part with, thanks getting me started though Bernard :)
I have four pairs of running shorts but I really only need two, one to keep at work for lunchtime and after work workouts and one to keep at home in case I want to run/workout at home. Of the pairs I got rid of, one pair was super short running shorts which are great for running but not really anything else while the other pair got mostly destroyed by the dryer. Parting with the shorts was pretty easy but I don’t think I could go any less than two pair because I use them every day, things would get kind of gnarly.
The Techwick shirts were a little harder because many of them came from cool events I’ve done. I decided to keep three shirts considering I use one pretty much every day and I use them on all of my hiking/camping trips in both the summer and the winter. If I only had one or two I feel like they’d wear out faster and I’d just have to get new ones. One of the shirts is reversible so it’s almost like having two shirts, score for versatile clothing.
I had four baseball hats, two of them are from marathons I didn’t run, one is from the Boston Marathon I ran but it doesn’t fit my big head, and the last one I bought for my trip to Israel last year. This hat is the only one I’ll keep because it actually fits, it’s pretty breathable, and I can use it in athletic and non-athletic scenarios. I had a wind-breaker from the Boston Marathon which is kind of a cool keepsake but relatively useless for me. I think I’ve worn it twice in two years, so into the purge pile it went.
Here’s my list which I’m sure I’ll update before the month is over. I started with 36 items and purged 17 items ending up with 19:
| Sports Clothing |
# Before |
# Purged |
# After |
| Bike Jerseys |
3 |
3 |
0 |
| Bike Shorts |
2 |
1 |
1 |
| Techwick Underwear (3, purged 1) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Techwick Shirts |
5 |
2 |
3 |
| Running Shorts |
4 |
2 |
2 |
| Base Layer (Pants) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Expedition Base Layer (Pants) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Base Layer (Shirt) |
3 |
1 |
2 |
| Expedition Base Layer (Shirt) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| MicroFleece |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Climaproof Jacket |
1 |
1 |
0 |
| Waterproof Shell Pants with Suspenders |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Wool Socks (6, purged 3) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Expedition Wool Socks (2, purged 0) |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Bandana |
4 |
4 |
0 |
| Baseball Hats |
4 |
3 |
1 |
| Rain Jacket |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| 3-in-1 Winter Jacket |
1 |
0 |
1 |
| Total Items |
36 |
17 |
19 |
