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May 26, 2005

The Great T-Shirt Reckoning of 2005

In which I attempt to thin the ever-expanding ranks of the pile of t-shirts in my closet

My t-shirt shelf is three-and-a-half feet tall. I don't know that said shelf was intended for use as such by whichever erstwhile resident installed the shelf system in the closet, but given the space's dimensions (42 in. x 13 in. x 12 in. -- I measured!) and my, ahem, rather significant t-shirt holdings, the poor thing never really had a chance. For the past three and a half years, it's been the proud home of my tower of t-shirts.

And when I say tower, I'm not kidding. The space was full, top to bottom, at all times (and that assumes that at any given moment a solid 5 percent of my total t-shirts are in circulation in a laundry pile or some other drawer or something). Never mind that a "tower" is probably the least efficient way to store the t-shirts (as it means that you only actually wear the 15 that are on top); most of that tower exists more as collection than wardrobe anyway. And it's quite a collection. Though I can't imagine that my t-shirt holdings are so much different from most folks from my age/ education demo, when I thought about it a bit, I realized that I do maintain a number of unsettling risk factors for above-average t-shirt accumulation:

(1) Multiple jobs at start-up internet/ technology companies: with the exception of building semi-useful software, selling consumer products below cost, and bragging to the press, there was nothing that pre-Nasdaq-crash tech companies liked to do more than make t-shirts.

(2) I've been to college and grad school and was in a "social" organization at least part of the time: not only are we going to have a CRAZY party, but we're going to commemorate just how CRAZY it was by making t-shirts! And what's even CRAZIER, sometimes those shirts will feature semi-clever double-entendres about "drinking" and "sex." Look out!

(3) I worked in the marketing department: so even when I wasn't waist-deep in dotcom, I was working in marketing for a consumer entertainment brand. Part of my responsibilities included designing the t-shirts. You can imagine where this is going (I only have, oh, like seven of said shirts).

(4) Proclivity for rec league sports: right, so it isn't so crazy, but I do have more than a few t-shirts from soccer and volleyball leagues around town. They pile up. Though, in all fairness, I'm not much of a runner so at least I avoided having a pile of "2001 Thanksgiving Corporate Challenge 5K" shirts.

Like I said, a tower. Still, everyone has a lot of t-shirts. They're just smarter about throwing away the old ones than I am. But with a Big Move looming on the horizon (more on that when it happens) and an unusual wellspring of OCD for a Monday (really don't know where all that came from), I decided to take a run at the t-shirts. That is, I decided to fell the tower and try to get rid of the shirts that I "haven't worn in six years."

As with (ahem) any large project, your strategy defines your success. If this was all going to work (meaning that I was going to get rid of the lousy t-shirts and keep the good ones), I needed to maintain some guidelines. Of course said guidelines didn't actually emerge until I was midway through the whole thing, but, hey, most of life is just recharacterizing the past anyway. Here's how it worked out:

White Flight: May 23, 2005 was not a good day to be a white t-shirt at my apartment. Purge, purge, purge! Though I held on to a core group of plain white t-shirts (mostly for use as undershirts), if you were a white t-shirt with writing on it, you most likely got the heave-ho (though of course some special exceptions were made -- see below). Sorry, fellas: the organization just decided to go in a different direction.

Perfect Colors: the inverse of the white t-shirt rule was that I tended to keep almost all of my non-white t-shirts. And among the ones I kept, select subrules were in play: (1) you can never have too many orange t-shirts -- never; (2) the brighter the color, the better -- I'm a sucker for bright colors; and (3) if there was any non-white color that I beat up on, it was gray -- with apologies to a certain upstate NY resident, I just don't feel the gray ones so much.

Forgive Us Our Trespasses As We Forgive....: in my earlier days, I had something of an affinity for the t-shirt-with-witticism. You know, the ones that boast some sort of clever and/ or naughty phrase that indicates that the wearer is a happenin' dude with a sly and knowing sense of humor. Yes yes, feel free to snicker. Right. All the "clever" ones were gone, especially the one about the "bad dog"; what the eff was I thinking with that one? (Though I'm going to admit that I held on to "Just Here For The Crack" featuring the crude line drawing of the alien and flying saucer; I have a soft spot for that one.)

Why Do They Call Her Long?: though they might not even qualify for this conversation (since one might classify them in a separate category of garment), it's understood that I kept all my long-sleeved t-shirts. They're too valuable to give up.

NASDAQ Nostalgia: in re: the above comments about having worked at a couple ill-fated dotcoms, I definitely held on to almost all the shirts from former employers, especially the ones that are now defunct. In fact, the more defunct, the better. Honorable mention for those that feature the names of products that are also defunct/ make-no-sense-at-all-and-certainly-have-no-place-on-a-t-shirt. Sales compensation management solutions? What?

Limited Editions: so if fewer than 30 of a t-shirt were made, say, for The Meetings, then I kept the t-shirt -- it's like protecting an endangered species.

The Museum Pieces: I suppose this should have been obvious to me before, but I realized about midway through the process the certain shirts only exist as part of my collection, and are never actually worn. I don't know if that really makes sense, but I just have a couple that are too cool to actually put on: my Hands On A Hardbody shirt (from the actual Nissan dealership in the movie!), my Be The Reds shirt (size XL but completely too small), and my Johny's Luncheonette shirt (home of the famous Sloppy Johny). This all just means I need to get a Lenny's shirt soon.

Righto, thanks for reading. Be sure to check back regularly for more updates as I clean out my sock drawer!

Posted by thatkid at May 26, 2005 4:34 PM under ThatKid

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