I wear and inordinate amount of shirts... This fact is made funnier by the fact that I only own four. I own four shirts because I own a lot of t-shirts - and I mean a LOT of t-shirts. I love them. Can't get enough of them. T-shirts are a good way of showing off your personality; logos and images of things you like; clever slogans and mildly-amusing riffs on pop-culture show you're aware of the world but don't really care enough to follow it accurately (or you're a mindless drone who has to keep up with the fashion of the times, but won't accept yourself that way and so thinks that shifting it one step to the right, i.e. buying a shirt with the "keep calm and carry on" motif replaced with words such as "now freak out and panic" (or, as in my case, the phrase "The rent is too damn high". Hey, a double-bracketed tangent)), or just the sheer number and variety of them showing you just can't focus on one thing long enough to find it thoroughly amusing, and so must have a new t-shirt for every day of the year so that then next time you wear it you can chuckle gently to yourself in nostalgic glee at that one occasion you did find it funny. Others are just kind of cute.
Anyway, the point I'm making is that I have reached a sort of laundry-based dilemma. During my mid-teens I went through a particularly soft-core gothic stage (I wore nothing but black all the time, though this only extended as far as jeans, trousers and t-shirts, with the odd black shirt for special occasions) and upon entering my 20's I decided my wardrobe, and indeed my life, needed a bit of brightening up - so I proceeded to purchase a lot of t-shirts. Woot.com has been quite a source of wonder for me over the last three years, and I have contributed to their paychecks no less than 40 time, and I now find myself the proud (and somewhat confusing) owner of quite a wardrobe full of t-shirts, ranging in colours from white to black, actually passing THROUGH the spectrum of colour on its way, and back again.
Of course, I mention the white tees because I own precisely three of them, and added to my four white shirts (and a handful of white boxer shorts) I find myself with almost - but not quite - enough white clothing to constitute a full load of washing. This annoys me. I don't like the idea of putting on a load of washing when there isn't enough of it to justify the amount of water used in it - I'm not precisely an eco-geek, but given the severity of my last utilities bill I could certainly do with making my life more eco-efficient. Add to this the fact that I won't often wear the white clothing because I have so many other colours that need wearing to justify their purchase, and you find me with a rather long gap between white loads.
What's more is the shirts. I wear a white shirt over most of my clothing because a) the extra layer keeps me warm in the climate we laughing call "English Weather" and b) the juxtaposition of the white over the colour beneath is pleasing to the eye (and c) because the slight obscuring of the design on the t-shirt beneath causes more people to lift one side up in order to see what lies beneath. If you're going to wear a t-shirt with a funny picture or slogan on it, you'd likely want others to actually wonder what it is). So what I find myself with is a two- or three-week period in which I am wearing the same four shirts for many days at a time while beneath it the pile of whites never quite rises to the point of justifiable washing. What's worse is that I don't wear a white tee and shirt combo, meaning that I have to sort out other shirts to cover them in the mean time (for those of you who ARE actually worried or interested by this fact, I do own a variety of other coloured shirts, JUST for such occasions).
It's quite a conundrum, one that screams "First World Problems", I know, but an irritating part of daily life all the same.
And on top of that, the majority of my t-shirts are still black...
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