Clothes, laundry and getting smaller

When we started on looking at ways to make our lives "smaller" one of the things that stood out was laundry. As a family that doesn't own a washer and dryer it is easy to see just how much laundry accumulates. One day as Mrs and I were at the laundry mat, we noticed that there were more clothes per person than days of the week. At some point one of us made the statement

We only have one body and there are only seven days. Why do we need more than eight changes of clothes?

And that is what we have done. For the most part, we only have enough clothing to make it though 7 days. That means eight full changes of clothes.

Of course we have work vs. dress up, and the daughter has her tennis gear. Even with that we do not have closets and dressers full of clothes. This means that we limit the number of times we change our clothes, are careful to avoid staining what we have, and might even "re-ware" a pair of already dirty pants or a shirt if we are just going to be getting dirtier. Because we are more carful our clothes last longer. We use less detergent and water. We do fewer loads of laundry. And we can live in a 100+ year old house with no closets.

Smaller footprint achieved.