Yesterday I caught myself questioning something that I have never ever thought about – homeware. By homeware I mean clothes that are worn at home.
When clothes get old and don’t look very presentable anymore, it’s not OK to wear them outside. But for some reason, it’s perfectly fine to wear them at home. Jeans with broken zippers, sweaters with holes, old t-shirts, desaturated by sun and multiple washes, and things like that…
And I know that I am not alone doing it. Plenty of people in Russia do the same. That might be caused by those hard times of the Soviet Union, when there weren’t that many clothes to buy or money to buy them with (is it even true? I don’t know). I have no idea if people from other countries and other cultures do the same. I never asked. And I never paid attention.
But yesterday… yesterday I realized that recently I spent much less time at home than outside. Should I now wear my best clothes at home and all the old stuff outside? In fact, why should I wear the old clothes anyway? Well, I want to. I just love my old clothes. It’s difficult for me to part with jeans, socks, and t-shirts. I get emotionally attached. But then, why don’t I wear them outside? Hmm… I do sometimes. On one hand, I don’t care about public opinion on this matter. On the other, I don’t want to embarrass the people I meet with – not all of them can take it.
All sorts of questions are rushing through my head now. But the biggest one of them is the one above – do people of other countries and cultures still wear clothes at home that they can’t wear outside?
I hate wearing my old clothes at home. A lot of comfortable clothes are sold for wearing at home to feel nice. When I was going to get married my grandfather told me that I first should look nice for my husband. I agree with that. Once or twice a year a friend of mine comes to take my old clothes to send her poor relatives in Ukraine.
I’m just bad with changing clothes. I don’t think that a whole or two make a cloth useless. It still feels good, and it still covers most of the body parts that it should.
It probably has to do with our society’s insecurities and underutilization. :)
My Cypriot friend certainly believes in clothes just for the home. I usually keep just an outfit for working around the house – like for painting etc. Since I usually throw on what’s handy, I don’t want to worry about if what I’m grabbing is ‘presentable’ for the outside or not. T-shirts are probably the hardest to part with!
I love my old pair of jeans. They pretty much have to split with my rear end hanging out before I get rid of them. Of course as you said, this is mostly at home.
Richard,
Thanks for stopping by. I’m glad to know that I’m not alone out there, in the world, wearing a See Through ™ Jeans at home :)
:-) I am from Bulgaria, so the situation is not very different from Russia, but I can assure you, that in spite I DO have nice clothes especially for home, I usually prefer my old ones…
Could be stupid, but when i like a lousy t-shirt, i just can’t get rid of it…
:)
Hehe, I enjoyed your thoughts on homeware a lot:)
I also like to wear some old clothes at home:)))
I am Norwegian American and my wife is Hispanic; we both have always done the same. After arriving home from work we will immediately change clothes into comfy old clothes. Only when clothes become excessively “saintly” do we dispose of them.