Last weekend I decided to clean out my pajama drawer, which until Saturday morning consisted of four pairs of pajama bottoms and thirteen t-shirts. It was getting awfully full, and I was fully aware of the fact that I can probably get by quite easily with just 2 or 3 pairs of pajama bottoms and 3 or 4 t-shirts. So I thought I’d do some housekeeping. I’m generally quite good at getting rid of clothes I don’t need. If I haven’t worn it for a year, it’s pretty well certain that I’m not going to miss it if it’s gone, and I’m happy to clear out room in my closet. But cleaning out my pajama drawer proved harder than I expected. And it was all because of the t-shirts.
I don’t wear t-shirts very often these days. They have their place (sports, outdoors activities), but for the most part, any t-shirt I end up with becomes a pajama top by default. So I almost never actually buy t-shirts, I just end up with them. But that’s the problem right there. I have to end up with them somehow, and this means that t-shirts usually have some sort of sentimental value attached to them via the reason I ended up with them in the first place. I thought it was going to be easy to cut my t-shirt collection in half or better, but when I pulled out my Provo River Half Marathon shirt, which is faded and stretched and dingy after accidentally being sent through the wash with a pair of jeans that bleeded all over the whites, and which I never wear anymore, I just couldn’t do it.
The Provo River Half Marathon was my first real distance race. That was the summer I first tried training for a marathon, only to get an injury five weeks before the race that kept me from being able to run even to the end of the block, much less 26.2 miles. It was pretty devastating to me after all the hard work I had put into it, but all the hard work was partially redeemed when I was able to get back on my feet and sign up for the half marathon up Provo Canyon in August. It was almost all downhill, and I since had trained up to 21 miles before my injury, 13.1 was a breeze. The canyon was gorgeous, the weather was perfect, the crowds were cheering, and I finished the race on about the most spectacular runner’s high I’ve ever felt, several minutes faster than I’d anticipated. I still look back on that race as the most fun I have ever had in a running event. No, I don’t ever wear that shirt anymore. But once I get rid of it, I relegate the race to pure memory.
And this is what I faced with each and every shirt. There’s the BYU Graduate Student Association shirt that reminds me of the time when I actually enjoyed being a graduate student, and the one Rex Lee Run shirt that I have held onto after years of running the annual 5K at BYU. There’s the Lotoja shirt from when my mom and I played support crew for my Dad and Eric on their 200-mile bike race, the shirt from my first (and so far only) marathon, and from this past year’s turkey trot, and from the Splash and Dash biathlon that Eric blogged about the other day. There’s my Class of 2005 shirt from when I graduated with my master's degree, and my 100 Hour Board shirt from my days as a 100 Hour Board writer, and the matching Jeppsen Family Reunion shirts we were all forced to wear to Disneyland a few years ago, and my more recent Zingerman's Tour de Food t-shirt which is too new to even think of getting rid of. And there's the one t-shirt of the bunch that I actually bought, a $5 Mackinac Island shirt from last summer on which I spilled paint during my painting-the-apartment project last summer. This somehow makes it even harder to let go of because there are now Mackinac Island and painting memories attached to it.
I really am not a packrat. I happily dispose of things that have no use to me. But throwing away any one of the t-shirts is like throwing away a memory.
For the record, I disposed of two of the thirteen. The BYU GSA shirt never looked that great to begin with, and held the same memory as the Class of 2005 shirt. I only really needed to hold onto one of the two. And the Provo River Half Marathon shirt…well, I decided that the memory itself was strong enough that I didn’t need the t-shirt to remind me.
5 comments:
Funny, I'd never thought of it that way. I so rarely wear t-shirts that you'd think I could get rid of them like that, but I can't. Now I know why!
Amy, I can totally relate. I was recently looking through my closet trying to get rid of stuff I never wear anymore and I saw two shirts that I wore on mission (which was a lot longer ago than I care to admit) and even though I haven't worn those shirts since my mission, I still can't get rid of them because of the memories! I think you did the right thing keeping most of those shirts :)
I think it's funny because I have quite a few of the same shirts as you. I was looking through the stack on the picture and thinking how we could be twins! No wonder we always end up wearing the same things.
I recently just did the same - looking thru all of my pj t-shirts and trying to donate the ones I hardly wear. Most shirts were from HS and MS!! Like...track shirts (the women were undefeated that year), homecoming senior girls shirt, and just more that have more memories than other shirts I own. I think it's so difficult getting rid of stuff that hold memories. The first shirt I spotted in that pic was the Macinac Island shirt - I just packed that into my missinon suitcase as a pj t-shirt! lol
I know someone who took all her old t-shirt memories and made them into a blanket. It's soft, neat, and she has the memories to look at/sleep with whenever she wants. Might be a good idea. Sorry, you don't know me, but I was a Board writer too, once upon a time.
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