Wardrobe Design-For less washing, wear and tear

I used to think fancy versus outdoor clothes was stupid and same with wearing aprons...until I actually had to follow a dress code and walk around with stain-free clothing that wasn't all black. Back-in-the-day people had wardrobes suited for less washing and less wear-and-tear on certain pieces of clothing. So, overalls over long underwear is a famous one. I was thinking that reverting to a modern-day-ish version of such a thing would be good. I'm sure many of you already do this and know the ins-and-outs. So I'll put my ideas down, and if you have some please add.

Wardrobe Tuning Ideas
-dark clothes last longer than light clothes; patterns help camouflage dirt too.
-full-sized apron in the kitchen
-I always wear a long, worn-out skirt when gardening (it's a tool as well as a clothing item) and worn-out pocketed over-shirt, but some sort of "work jumper" seems like a good idea, like a good jean skirt-overalls, or even something out of light leather, or another tough material. This would rarely be washed because it's intended to be dirty.
-leg warmers/knee pads. My knees, despite the skirt still get ruined, so this would also be double-use.
-thin cotton shirt(s) these would stay stain-free but catch B.O., which means regularly washed, but since they are thin, a lot would be in one load. This, underwear, and when they are necessary: socks. This would save on washing me too.
-The real fasion designing of the outfit would be in between the cotton shirt and the work garment. So, this is were knitted blouses etc. would fit in. These would not need to be washed much because they would never really be exposed to dirt or sweat and being dark in color they would be less prone to stains and use less energy to clean.  

So, rather than washing a full outfit every night, maybe with a few layers, I could reduce the load (theoretically) down to long underwear and socks during winter or a cotton shirt and underpants during summer. A significant reduction in laundry workload (and no need to sort either). At least, that's the theory...what think you?

As with just about every answer in permaculture......it depends. It depends upon how dirty your work is, how much you sweat, if you're working with livestock, etc.

I try to reduce my laundry load, but I still go through a lot of clothes during the week. I start the day out wearing my "decent" clothes for the first hour while I get breakfast together, warm the house up on chilly mornings, tend the cats and dogs, tend the hubby, and do some light house jobs. When I'm ready to do farm work, I change into work clothes, setting my decent clothes aside to be worn again later on in the evening or if I need to run into town for something. Typically I can get three days (or more) of wearing out of the decent clothes before they need laundering.

Work-on-the-farm clothes are a totally different story. Sometimes by lunchtime they are so dirty, grubby, dusty, itchy, or stinky that I change into a new set. I'd say 5 days out of 7 I use two sets of work clothes a day. I'm not talking about a splotch of dirt here, a smear there. I'm saying that I've gotten really, really dirty. And have built up a sweat. And if I've been cleaning out the chicken pen, trimming donkey hooves, or working with the sheep, I smell quite awful. Well....I kind of like some of the smell, but I'm sure that others wouldn't consider it pleasant to smell like a donkey or ram.

My main reason that I couldn't get away with wearing layers or over clothes is that I'm in a warm climate. Thus, I sweat. My main farm work outfit consists of a battered t-shirt and shorts. Anything more is too hot to wear and still work without floating in a pool of sweat. And I really like to get into my work. I suppose a hobby farmer could stay cleaner, like the ones that are pictured in the glossy magazines. But on this farm, I'm serious about having a self sustaining homestead, and that means some down & dirt work.

By the way, I think it's a great idea if one could wear special outer clothing in order to protect the under layers. If I could, I'd slip on an over smock. Let that get dirty so that I could wear the rest of the outfit multiple days. But in my climate, it's simply not going to happen.

Here's another take on this idea......

One of my neighbors lives with no electricity except a small generator which he uses to charge two batteries for running his water pump and a couple light bulbs. I think he might also charge his cellphone and tablet, but then again, he might to that at the local library. Anyway, he uses extremely little electricity. Needless to say, he goes to a laundromat to clean his clothes. I was chatting with him today and I brought up this topic. Here's what he had to say......

He has an outfit he wears when using his weedwacker (three days a week). After using it, he hangs it up on the outside line and beats it with a stick until the majority of dust and loose debris is off. Then he hangs it up on the back porch for the next time. He has another outfit he wears when tending his small garden and doing light work outdoors. This he shakes out and hangs on the back porch between uses. He has a "house clothes" outfit which he airs out each evening. Since he only wears it when hanging out around his house, it seldom needs anything done but airing. These various outfits get used for a full month before laundering. Then he also has daily "going to town" clothes, which he changes when they get soiled or develop an odor, but he can extend their use by spot cleaning with a washcloth and hanging them out to air each evening. He told me that he often gets 3-4 days use out of them, but he also said that he always dons fresh clean clothes for appointments. All tolled, he can reduce hid laudramat visits to once a month.

Growing up in the 1980's and 1990's on a farm when farming was really looked down upon (my how things have changed), the worse reputation you could get was "always smelling like a barn." Today that still sticks with me and when we do go out, people are often shocked that my wife and I, are often the best-dressed people in the restaurant on a husband-wife date.

My wife; she has her barn clothes that she might wash a few times a year. It is only worn when doing chores and it only takes us an hour or so to do them. Really the only reason they get washed is due to amniotic fluid when all those lambs are born and we have to carry them into the lambing pens. These barn clothes include boots, jacket, sweatshirt, thick socks and gloves.

Me, I am outside a little more and do lots of logging so my clothes often smell a bit like diesel exhaust and chainsaw fumes. In that way my outside clothes get washed more, and I have various jackets. My main go-too is a thick hooded sweatshirt. Carhartt has some, but you have to special order them online. In stores they are rather light, or at best medium in weight. But a hood is great because I can pop it on and off as I go from inside to outside; something I do a lot.

We go to church so our good clothes are not washed as often as you think. They are never stained or dirty, it is just that you don't need to wash something as often when you only wear it a few hours on Sunday and Wednesday. Keeping a few changes of clothes keeps people from thinking you wear the same clothes every week. Occasionally things happen and I miss a stain like yesterday. It was a spot of spilled coffee about the size of a quarter by my collar when I discovered it at church. I was asked to do a presentation on how sheep farming today was similar to farming in the bible, so I was up front speaking. Inevitably when you minimize stuff, you sometimes miss the mark so coping is a life skill. Knowing EVERYONE has done the same thing, had stained clothes in permies, I just embrace it with humor. So the first thing I said was, "Okay right up front I want everyone to know I got a coffee stain on my shirt, so now that we got that out of the way..." Everyone laughed and on I went, no big deal.

But as frugal as we are, my wife has just found that cheap clothes are not worth it. They won't fit as well or are as comfortable so they don't get worn as often. Even then they do not last. I absolutely choked when a black miniskirt she bought had a $50 price tag considering what little material it was made of, but she lives out of miniskirts most days, and four years later it looks just as good as when she bought it and is worn far more then her $10 miniskirts bought from Walmart. The same can be said for her Calvin Klein dresses. Expensive, but not when deducted over amount of times worn to price.

Us on a Valentines Date. I guess as full-time farmers we are supposed to wear bib overalls and chew on straw, but we choose to buck the trend.

When I worked in an office, I stopped buying patterned fabric stuff, except as an accent. Why? Patterns and pattern styles go out of fashion more quickly than colors do. Almost all solid colors will “go” with one another with some care.

Second, we live in a zone 5 area, so we get snow. That means two wardrobes. Or an adaptation. My way to reduce is to use what I can year round.

Summer: leggings/jeans, tank top, t shirt or sweater.
Winter: tank top/long john top, turtleneck,  sweater or vest, leggings/long john bottoms, pants.

I buy most of my clothes used, except shoes and underwear.

We don’t dress up much or “go out” and I have clothes left from the office days that still work if we do.

The idea of buying high quality appeals, but somehow it doesn’t happen. When I was in college, I ran a dish room for a while. My uniform was boys’ 16x jeans and a chambray shirt.  If I ever lose my middle-age pear shape, that’s what I’ll go back to.

Hi Jeanie

I find buying high quality leaves me with a twisted approach in practice .... I am afraid to wear my more expensive clothes when I am working outside.

I am very particular about socks. I only wear Darn Tough wool socks. They never really smell even if you wear them for several days in a row!
Wool underwear holds up so much better and longer than cotton.
All of our towels are hung outside on the clothesline to dry. They hardly ever need to be washed this way as the sun sterilizes them for you.
All of our clothes are line dried. That helps so much with how long clothes last.
Finally, jeans were meant to be worn over and over without washing. I will go 2 weeks on a pair if they don't get super muddy.

For myself, I just wear jeans and a tshirt.  In the summer I wear a cotton overshirt for shade.  I have wool long sleeved inderlayers for winter, and cotton knotted sweater vests over that, and long sleeved corduroy or flannel shirts over that.

I don’t have a regularly  scheduled laundry routine.  I wear things over and over…. being old I don’t get much BO, and my skin is no longer oily.  I wear clothes mostly to protect my skin from tears and abrasions, and the UV of high desert, and social customs… wouldn’t ever be comfortable as a nudist, just saying 99.9% of the time, clothes are about function for me.

Sometimes I put the clothes in the wash pile because I have been wearing them “forever”.  Sometimes because I have been in the mud, and sometimes I put on clean clothes for the lift of how good it feels to wear clean clothes.  And the feeling that I can not bear to put those clothes on “ine more time!”

Eons ago, I tie dyed a t shirt for my 3 year old daughter, with beautiful results.  She really liked wearing that shirt, and I liked seeing her in it.  We took a trip, a couple days on the road, and visiting.  I remember realizing that tie dye was perfect for children because it did not show splotches and spills.  If a person has to look presentable and well groomed and socially acceptable, I recommend some form of tie dye!😊

And, like Jody, it’s Darn Tough socks all the way.  Knee high and wool, right through the summer

I just about stopped wearing waterproofs about ten years ago when I first move to northern Scotland. I bought an overshoot from a Sheffield UK company called Buffalo which is a quite heavy pile inside with a fairly tough Pertex outer. Lots of venting zips. Specifically their Special 6 shirt. You will still get wet in heavy rain, but not cold and not steamy, so less stink. If I stop what I'm doing all zips get closed, snug and warm. Working hard, all vents open, up to about 12 degrees C. Above that I then got their unlined Pertex top, same design, merino wool long sleeve under.

Waterproofs only now get worn if I'm doing something so grubby that hosing myself off after would be a good idea.

So I think less sweating in my buffalo means less washing :)

For me, it is t-shirts, skirts and flip flops.

Less wear and tear because I wear them days instead of washing everyday...

Amit Enventres wrote:some sort of "work jumper" seems like a good idea, like a good jean skirt-overalls, or even something out of light leather, or another tough material. This would rarely be washed because it's intended to be dirty.

I like this idea. I tend to always wear trousers and a boiler suit type overalls if it is cool enough (it usually is here!), but I am contemplating making (or possibly buying) a smock like garment. Maybe like a fishermans' smock that pulls over the head and has large pockets. Something like this perhaps:



If made a little longer of fairly heavy fabric it would keep a shower off if I was working outside. Big pockets to store tools/harvest...I don't know why these go so far up the chest though.

I was brought up that there were good clothes and hanging-around clothes, and woe to the person who wore their good clothes out in the yard. Today I'm all about wearing specific clothes for different tasks: exercise, yard/garden/animals, and office/house work.
I have a lot of aprons, a dedicated pair of yard/mud pants, and a short-sleeved lab-coat like smock with pockets that buttons down the front and goes to mid-thigh. That thing is used every time I go in the yard, I found it to be better than aprons.
I also use sleeve gaiters, started with fleece ones to keep warm in the winter, but I also use them to protect the sleeves of my clothes when I am outside or in the kitchen working. The stains and thorns get the gaiters, not my clothes, and the life of my clothes is greatly extended (because it's usually the sleeve cuffs that go first for me).
I make them out of tights, sometimes fleece or sometimes just normal opaque tights, usually girls' sizes work well. I also have a few pairs of actual UV-protection gaiters (for fishermen, I think) that I use in the summer for yard work, but they are not for clothes protection.

One thing mentioned upthread that someone told me years and years ago has always stuck with me- I started out working in New York City during my last year of college and laundry was a hassle. Office clothes were expensive to dry clean. A friend said the best thing to do was hang clothes to air out as soon as you take them off, it gets rid of impending stink and gives you another couple wearings. When you have only a few items, this can be a lifesaver (3 bras and noplace to wash/dry them, for example)-- let them air overnight and you may be able to use them again. I still hang up clothes after wearing them, in hopes of another airing. And of course, if you live in brown recluse spider territory, shake them out before wearing!!!

I constantly kneel and forget to put down a kneeling pad.  Or crawl around pruning, weeding, etc.  I ruin the knees of all my work clothes.  I need to buy pants with reinforced knees or sew on knee pads.  Good work clothes that can hold up to a lot of washing are expensive.  I have found some good buys at thrift stores.  I should also get a good tool belt!

Great ideas. Mr. Rodger’s sweater show used to baffle me.  Myself, often Cotton on the inside. But thousands of years tends not to be wrong. WOOL. for the brutal tasks. Logging, fencing, full contact Gardening:) Felted, knitted then felted. I’ve been blending raw silk into an outer layer of the heavy felts for a ridiculously strong fiber.  Cedar bark needle felted with silk and then felted between to layers just at the sweat spots into a vest is my overall favorite. Smells like forest everywhere you go.  How much plastic micro fiber are you breathing in from clothes daily? Cheers.