Five Shirts Enter! Five Shirts Leave!

Well, I had a chance to test my willpower this past weekend. As loathe as I am to shop for clothes, it turns out that right before they cycle in the Spring styles is a great time to find stuff at 50-80% off. Combine that with a couple of coupons and it’s pretty easy to catch the restocking bug.

These kind of sales usually end up with me carting home armloads of shirts and cramming them into too-full drawers. My previous defenestration of said drawers meant that didn’t have to worry about crowding…which could have easily led to major overbuys. Instead, I kept my rule of five firmly in my head. T-shirts were passed over immediately because I already have five tees that I like and I’m not ready to get rid of any. My work shirts, however, were all showing their age of two years (or more), so it was time to stock up. Again, this could have resulted in me blindly grabbing every polo shirt I saw on the clearance rack. Instead, when I got to the second store and started rifling through, I kept in mind that I’d already purchased two shirts and could only get three more.

Pants provided me with a slightly different challenge. A change in dress code at work means that I can wear jeans again, and I have my requisite two pairs; but I apparently dropped a waist size at some point in the past year. So I allowed myself an extra pair, keeping firmly in mind that I have a pair that are rather frayed at the ankles – they’ll find themselves in a Goodwill bag once they do some time as “casual” jeans. However, the now three sizes-too-big jean shorts that I replaced with another clearance find don’t pass Go – they’ll go right into the bag.

So it was a rather successful day in that I was able to freshen up my wardrobe, maintain order over my hungry drawers, and keep spending down. It’s not exactly a Thunderdome level, revelation; but it’s nice to know that the system is keeping me honest.