The liberation of disposable clothing

A horse used my shirt for a napkin the other day at the 4-H fair, drooling green grassy slime all over my shoulder. The stain didn’t come out the first trip through the washer, so it remains to be seen whether this is a napkin of the reusable or disposable variety.

The bad news: It was a brand new shirt. I literally cut the tags off just before I put it on that day.

The good news: Thanks to the “no new clothes” vow (and my rapidly changing clothing sizes as I cut weight), I’ve developed an “easy come, easy go” attitude about my wardrobe. (Though this really was a brand new shirt, with its original tags intact, I bought it at Goodwill.)

‘No New Clothes’ update

I finally found a tank top to go with my favorite orange running shorts, at Salvation Army, where they group shirts according to color. Wouldn’t it be easier if regular stores did the same? You need an orange shirt, you look in the orange shirts section. What could be simpler?

No new clothes update

When I decided to go a year without buying myself any new clothes, it didn’t occur to me that I might shed 45 pounds in the first five months of the year.

I still haven’t bought any new clothes. Which means that I‘m scanning the racks at the local thrift shops with greater urgency these days. The hardest thing to find is workout clothes, which I’m now wearing much more often. Might have to target some garage sales in some high-end subdivisions to find more of that stuff.

The one thing I might let myself buy new (in addition to undergarments) is a pair of running shoes. Now that I’m regularly jogging 10 miles a week or so, I think decent footwear could be considered a piece of equipment. I’m still holding out for a used swimsuit, though.

T-shirt cravings

Why am I suddenly craving a Butler T-shirt? Other than the fact that they made it to the Final Four, just like I predicted in my NCAA tournament bracket?

I like their teamwork and defense and connection to the movie “Hoosiers.” They’re fun to watch -- relentlessly attacking the basket in a way that feels both old and new at the same time. But I don't know the players' names, and I have no real connection to the school, other than knowing maybe two people who graduated from there. And of course I’ve vowed not to buy any new clothes this year, so unless I find a Butler Bulldogs shirt at Goodwill, it’s not even on my decision tree.

Still, this is exactly the sort of thing I think about when I’m looking over T-shirts at Goodwill. Do you buy a cool T-shirt if it’s from a school or team you have no real-world connection to? I once bought a Cleveland Indians shirt because its manager at the time, Eric Wedge, was a Fort Wayne guy. But I never wore it. Because even though I love baseball in general (and once loved the Cincinnati Reds in particular), I just never felt like “this is a day where I want to field comments about the Cleveland Indians.”

If I had a Butler shirt, I'd probably be wearing it right now. Or next weekend, during the Final Four. But would I feel like wearing it once the tournament was over? Probably not. Still, that’s the nice thing about buying used clothes. You never invest too much in a whim. And when you get tired of the stuff you do buy, you can always release it back into the collective pool of unwanted T-shirts so it can find a new home.