Laundry Day

I have about 50 pairs of white socks in 6 different styles; about 15 of them are crew socks, the rest are ankle or "booty" style. I didn't bother counting the non-white ones.

I have an entire drawer full of undershirts; they are mostly not-white. Generally black or grey. Ironically, I rarely wear them as undershirts; usually, I'll wear a regular shirt as a kind of jacket, but the undershirt is really just the shirt.

I have a drawer of underwear that I don't wear, and when I do wear them, they're not under anything. I used to be an underwear fiend; I've got silk, satin, flannel - boxers, briefs, boxerbriefs, thongs, one-piece - black, white, grey, red, blue, pattered... I stopped about two years ago wearing underwear for almost all occasions (I do with a couple pairs of pants, simply because they're almost transparent; while that doesn't bother me, it tends to make religious folks titter). Between my socks, underwear, and undershirts, I could probably clothe a small tribe in Africa. Well, a skinny tribe, anyway.

The main reason I have so much in the way of socks, underwear, and undershirts is to facilitate laundry. See, most of the "outer" clothes I wear are dark-colored: blues, blacks, browns, dark grey. So, if I did laundry every other week (like most people I know), I'd have a large pile of darks and about a quarter of a load of whites since socks, underwear, and undershirts don't take up much bulk. This way, I can wait to do my whites for 4 or 5 weeks and still have clean stuff, so that by the time I do a load it's actually a load.

I have no logical reason for why I have 47 ties. I hate ties, and generally will not wear them even on formal occasions. I usually manage to get away with vests and mandarin collars in formal wear, though once in a while I have to resort to strangulation. I think I've been given most of them.

I have a black silk robe. If you ever come across a situation where a black silk robe is appropriate wear (that doesn't involve the Playboy Mansion), let me know.

I only own three pairs of jeans: two black, one blue. I own a pair of white pants that are jean-ish, but they're not really jeans.

I own four suits, though - three black, one grey. Only the grey one would be considered a "buisness suit"; the others are, technically, tuxedoes.

(It probably says a lot about me that I own as many tuxedoes as jeans.)

I've got about 15 sweaters or sweatshirts of various types. Most of them my mother bought for me as Christmas presents. She's got pretty good taste, and never knows what else to get me.

Of course, there's also a slew of long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, and non-jean pants. They take up two drawers and about 4/5ths of my closet, and are far too varied to count in any reasonable way. They range from a hocket shirt and a rugby shirt (blue/white and purple/black, respectively) to dress slacks and old pirate-style lace-up shirts.

As far as shoes go: one pair of running shoes, one pair of slip-on vans (my day-to-day shoes), two pairs of dress boots, one pair of dress shoes, my flipflops (Armani Exchange, for a laugh) and a pair of water shoes (a kind of rubber-soled cloth sandal designed for walking in streams or in tide pools).

So, all in all, I have about 85 cubic feet of clothing. That's 4/5ths the cubic feet of books that I have just in my room.

At least the books don't need to be set for knits-gentle-low.

(I skipped the "random fact", since this entire post pretty much qualifies. But, Don Henley rocks.)