Tag Archives: Clothing

I have looked at my unnamed teddy bear (I never got around to christening him) a great deal more than usual this week; I suspect as a reaction to watching Brideshead Revisited (the movie) last weekend and seeing Sebastian Flyte with his bear Aloysius.  Yes, I know it’s been out for an age but I am only just getting around to catching up with a raft of films I missed when they were first released.

Now on to something completed different but trust me there is a tenuous connection.  It may be a sign of incipient insanity but from late 2009 I have kept a clothes spreadsheet, diligently entering the cost and details of everything I bought since then and daily updating the spread sheet on the basis of what I am wearing that day (clothes purchased pre the end of 2009 are not included as it would have been impossible to remember when I purchased them and their exact cost) to arrive at a cost per wear figure.  It’s not time-consuming, it takes about 15 seconds to enter each new purchase and a similar amount of time daily to update the sheet.  It ‘s extremely satisfying to see the cost per were reduce the more I wear something but also very sobering when I look at the per wear cost of items worn infrequently.  I think that the only sane conclusion from studying the spreadsheet is that I have too many clothes; I have in mind as a project for next year to buy less and to properly sift through my closet and remove the bulk of rarely/never worn items.

Now back to the nameless teddy and the tenuous connection.  I bought his blue-striped shirt in Camden Passage in Islington when I lived in London, if I were to work out the cost of the shirt per sq cm it could well be the most expensive separate I ever bought. However unnamed teddy has worn it every day (except for sporadic-shirt-washing-days) since 1990, so on a cost per wear basis it’s almost certainly  my best buy.  Sadly nothing on my clothes spreadsheet comes anywhere close.

Is there anyone else out there who keeps a cost per wear spreadsheet?