My Good Friend, Store

I have to give a shout out to Victoria's Secret for their persistance, demonstrated by their continuing to send coupons for free underpants even though I only buy something there about once every two years. They followed us to our new address, even though we didn't give it to them, and the post office doesn't forward catalogs!

This might seem a little creepy, but since it means continued coupons, I'm all for it. Sure, I'm being stalked by a lingerie store, but at least they're giving me stuff.

As you can see, I am easily mollified.

It might seem like kind of a poor return on the investment for them, if I spend $30 on a sports bra every two years, while cheerfully accepting 6 or 8 pairs of $7-10 underpants in the same period, but I suppose I'm more likely to buy something if I go in there to pick up free garments than if I never go in there at all.

There's this sense of guilt they probably rely on, where you feel kind of like a lowly moocher if you only go in to redeem a coupon, so you buy a little something as long as you're in the store. Because it's only polite, you know.

And I'll acknowledge that I have felt that sense of guilt, as if I had some sort of social relationship with a store that increasingly doesn't make anything I actually want to wear, and I have in years past purchased things I didn't entirely need, so I'm not saying it doesn't work. It works nicely: the store was kind enough to give you a little present, so obviously the courteous thing to do would be to spend some money there!

Lately, though, given the lack of anything in the store that I want very badly, I'm trying to embrace my inner lowly moocher a little more. "Yeah, I'm just here for the free stuff. Hand it over, I'm in a hurry."

After all, they don't have to send coupons. And you never know, I might buy something, one of these times.

Tasting Just About as Sweet as Wine

Given my previously expressed interest in wine, I could not help but sit up and take notice (as opposed to lying down and going to sleep, which is my usual response to things) at the report of wine made into clothing (bioalloy project website here, summarized on Skepchick here).

I normally prefer to drink wine rather than wear it, and the fabric looks a little weird (honestly, it looks rather creepily like dried blood in some of the pictures), but I'm all for creative uses of things. This is cool, in a strange sort of way.

Inquiring minds naturally want to know, if you have a dress made of wine, could you chew on it to enjoy the wine later? That could be handy at sporting events and the like, where the concessions are always sooooo expensive.

Also, they probably don't have any good wine. Not that you'd want to use the good wine to make clothing, either.

Don't mind me, thoughtfully gnawing on my sticky-blood-colored sleeve while I watch this riveting baseball action. I'm just eating my garments, as one does at tense moments. Mmm...delicious tense moments.

xkcd Totally Supports My Sock Plan

xkcd has some useful perspective for people (ahem--no one I personally know) who reflexively seek out the money-saving options in life.

xkcd, Creative Commons license.

I did consider the value of my time before concluding it's not worth it to me to darn my socks, even though I could save a few cents by getting a little more use out of them before I eventually have to buy more.

On the contrary, folding the top down over the heel, as I propose, takes mere seconds, much less than would be involved in any form of sock-shopping. This is why it's brilliant.

All that's sacrificed is any kind of style around the ankle region, but to be honest, this has never been an area of vanity for me.

If I can extend the useful life of each pair of socks by just a few days, delaying the purchase of new ones, it will eventually add up to fewer total socks purchased in the course of my life, thus less time spent purchasing socks, and thus more time to read internet comics.

You can't argue with that logic. Because I forbid it.

I don't think anyone would argue that more time for internet comics is not a glorious win. For me, but also for the ideals of right and goodness in the universe at large.

No Rest for the Footed

Good news, everyone! I've hit on a way to extend the life of my socks!

You know how the heel of the sock is generally the first thing to go? Often, even if the rest of the sock is still in pretty good shape, there will be a big hole in the heel that makes it uncomfortable to wear.

In the old days, we (or our hard-working mothers) might have darned these holes, basically weaving a little extra fabric out of thread to patch it up, and this is good honest labor, but honestly it takes more time than it's worth to me anymore.

And yet, I still wish to pull the last fraying threads of usefulness from every piece of clothing!

What to do?

This trick doesn't work with ankle socks, or very short socks, but I find that if your hole-heeled sock goes a bit of the way up the leg, say to mid-calf or so, you can just roll the 'neck' of the sock down, over the heel.

You have to pull it pretty far down, so it tucks under the heel of your foot, otherwise it will just ride up. This stretches the neck of the sock out and wrecks the elastic, but since we're already talking about socks you don't wear because there are holes in the heels, I don't think this is a huge problem.

I've crafted this fine illustration to explain the simple brilliance of the scheme.

Now you have wrinkly, uneven ankle socks (because there's more fabric in front), and you're walking on a tiny ridge of fabric, but at least your shoes won't be chafing your heels through the holes.

Brilliant, right? I'm sure someone else has thought of this already, but they couldn't be bothered to share it with the class, so I had to come up with it on my own.

Some people may be thinking, at this point, "why don't you just go buy new socks?"

And I wish it were that easy. I really do.

Clothing Fancy

Is there a clever way to rebrand a tee shirt? I have a quite nice one, with a good fit and made of a nice soft cotton, but it's got the distinctive logo of a past event that I don't really care about continuing to promote.

It would be nice if you could get the logos off of shirts, but I suppose that's a vain dream.

And by 'a vain dream' I of course mean one in which I admire myself inordinately in my handsome logo-free tee shirt. My but I do look good in that shirt in that dream.

Data Gathering

I would like you to enjoy this post from Swan Tower which gathers and carefully evaluates data on the t-shirt-wearing habits of a subject in the researcher's household.

Now that's science.

Or something.

Makes me want to undertake my own laundry-related projects.

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Hot This Season: Last Season

I visited a thrift shop this afternoon to do some clothes shopping.

I'd been feeling that I could use a few more items of clothing suitable for wearing to work, and I found four pairs of pants and two shirts for $40. A fair price for used clothes in Boston, and a fabulous one compared to retail (I found a pair of pants that apparently was meant to retail at $248, multiply marked down and eventually thrift-shopped and purchased by me for $11), plus I get to give some deserving garments a good home and support the worthy mission of Goodwill in general.

I have concluded that there's pretty much no reason to ever buy any clothing retail.

Well, maybe undergarments. One kind of likes to feel that those are new, even though one knows rationally that there's no reason a secondhand pair of underpants, properly laundered, would not be perfectly serviceable, and just as clean as some pair of newly-manufactured underpants that might have fallen on the floor in the factory or something.

It seems weird, though, just the idea of wearing used undergarments. Ew!

My guess is that your overanxious brain leaps to the conclusion that, technically, having your naughty bits next to a piece of cloth that was once next to some stranger's naughty bits means you might as well be having sex with that person. And your brain is concerned that you don't know where that stranger's naughty bits have been, or whether that stranger is attractive enough to be worth sharing your genetic legacy with, so be careful.

Your brain does not seem to be familiar with the concept of washing machines.

Anyway, undergarments aside, I decided that I want to buy pretty much everything used, and I've been doing reasonably well at it. Save money! Save perfectly good garments from being wasted! It's a world of awesome.

Plus, this way if it turns out the clothes were sewed by underpaid children or any of the other horrible labor practices you seem to keep hearing about, at least I can feel that I didn't personally give money to a company that made that happen.

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