It was 11am on Monday when I decided I should throw half of my clothes away.
I had only recently read The Times‘ extract of James Bloodworth’s new book Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-Wage Britain, and his words about working a month in a retail giant’s warehouse weighed heavily on my mind.
… My feet began to resemble two ragged clods of wax gone over with a cheese grater. Traipsing around for ten miles when your feet are soft and you’ve eaten well and slept soundly is one thing. Doing it for four consecutive days (and that’s before any overtime is factored in), with very little let-up and on a diet of ready meals, is another thing altogether.
When they start, cordial, bright-eyed young Romanian men and women are so busy running around that they don’t even have time to wipe the sweat from their faces. Just a few days later they’ll be curled over their trolleys, trying to snatch a morsel of sleep out of sight of the supervisors.
My love of fast fashion – and rapid accumulation of clothes I don’t particularly like, let alone need – suddenly became very apparent.
Despite only moving in to my apartment 14 months ago, I realised I had accumulated a ludicrous amount of clothes I never even wear; clothes that had once been popped into a trolley with a single click, only to be worn once and relegated to the back of the heap.
When it came to my wardrobe/floordrobe, there was no order to anything. At all. I started to think someone was sneaking in and stealing all my undies… that a pesky, stealthy Cotton On thief was on the loose while I was forced to go commando at least once a week.
There was the other small issue of my boyfriend threatening to break up with me unless I got my floordrobe under control (not really, but another fortnight and he’d probably be organising for the locks to be changed).
It was my day off work and I resolutely decided ‘enough’. It was time to sort my clothes mess out. I put on a Spotify playlist and dove in head-first, finding too many pairs of abandoned underwear along the way.
Top Comments
I do the same thing every couple of years & it always feel terrific. Well done 😊