494 | Half-Dirty Clothes

The Minimalists talk about what to do with half-dirty clothes, setting minimalist boundaries, breaking difficult news to your mom, the role our outfits play in our identities, getting an education outside the school system, letting go of regret, and more! Discussed in this episode: What would a minimalist do with clothes that have been worn but aren't ready to to be washed? (2:05) What do you do with your half-dirty clothes? (16:24) Right Here, Right Now: Joshua's birthday request. (30:38) Listener tip: Spice up the Seasonality Rule by minimizing out-of-season clothing. (32:54) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, yes, yes, yes. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. Joining me here at Earthing Studios in West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman. Hey, hey, hey. Coming up on this free, public, minimal episode, a caller has a question about minimalist laundry solutions. And then we've got a question about what to do with your half-dirty clothes. TK, you're so dirty, but you're half-dirty. [laughing] That's all about our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 494. That's the full two-hour episode, where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon.

• 1:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The link is in the description. Now, when you subscribe, you get access to our private podcast episodes on Apple or Spotify or your favorite podcast app, plus you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to episode 001. That's a full decade of podcast archives. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because, sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Becky.

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Hi Minimalists, this is Becky, a Patreon subscriber from Nebraska. I want to thank you guys for all the ways you've brought peace into my life. Not only the decluttering, but also just teaching me how to love myself and love those most important to me, and even those that aren't important to me. So, thank you for all of those things. My question is around bedroom clutter.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  We have minimized a lot of what we have in the bedroom, and it's mostly clutter-free, but what we still struggle with in our home is clothing that has been worn, but is not yet ready to be washed. And I don't really like putting it back with the other clothes, because I like to know that it needs to be washed sooner than later. But I guess that I struggle with where to place those. And then I'm thinking, maybe if I was more of a minimalist, I wouldn't even have this problem. And so as I was thinking about that, I thought, well, maybe if I cleared out some more clothing that I don't really need, I could have a drawer just designated for these clothes in my dresser,

• 3:22Speaker 02

  and then they wouldn't have to sit on top and bother me. So I was just curious if you had any thoughts about this, and I'd love to hear them. And thank you for all you guys do. Really appreciate you.

• 3:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Becky, you're absolutely right. If you were more of a minimalist, you would own no clothes. And then you have no clothes to get half dirty, and then therefore no clothes to wash, obviously. But of course, that's not where we're going with this, right? People often, they throw up that straw man argument around minimalism, and you think of like the naked ascetic in a cave somewhere. And that's not what I think of when I think of minimalism at all. And obviously, that's not what Becky is thinking about here. In fact, you had a solution in your question that I love, that I would consider implementing in my own life as well. And you said, "Maybe if I cleared out some of the clothes I don't wear, I'd make space for an extra drawer where I could keep some of these clothes that I've already worn, but maybe they're not ready to be washed just yet."

• 4:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think there are some other solutions as well. I'd like to run through a few of those. But before I do, TK, we're kind of talking about this clothing purgatory. It's like, "I wore the thing, but it's not ready to be washed." And yet, at the same time, I don't want to put it back with my, with my clean clothes, even though it's sort of half-clean. What does clothing purgatory look like here?

• 4:41Speaker 03

  It looks like this. I mean, purgatory is all about refining. It's about purifying, right? And Becky is in a place, or a process, rather, where she's trying to refine, simplify, purify her process of the excesses regarding how does she maintain her clothes? When do I wash them? Where do I store them? How do I combine them and keep them and so on? And it's kind of tricky here because there's a part of me that's asking, if the clothes aren't fresh enough to touch or be in proximity to the clean things, are they fresh enough to be in touch with you? If you don't want them being with the clothes that are clean, do you want them being on you or with you?

• 5:25Speaker 03

  Is it possible that there's some room to negotiate when we wash these things? It may be the case that if something is not ready or qualified to be in the closet, then that is what it means for it to be in the place where things are ready to wash. I think that's a worthy consideration. I also do like this idea that says, hey, maybe if I just took a look at some other things I could get rid of, then this ceases to be a problem because I'm just dealing with less. And sometimes the best way to solve an existing problem is to get rid of all the things that make the problem unbearable, so that we can rely on our natural ability to cope with it or tolerate with something that is actually just manageable.

• 6:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I could talk to you about what I do here, and then I've talked to several other minimalists, and they do some things different from me. And so I think there are different perspectives here, but I'm actually considering what Becky said here of clearing out a drawer that you have for it. That, to me, is a beautiful solution to a mechanical problem. However, that can also become a hindrance, right? If you have so many clothes in that drawer that the drawer is now bursting at the seams with all of these clothes that have been worn, but they're not ready to be washed, maybe there's an underlying problem there as well. And so I was at Kristin Ziegler's house a few months ago. We were filming her for our next documentary. She has the most beautiful house in the way that she organizes things by clearing out all of the excess.

• 6:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's not, she is a professional organizer and I often say that organizing is well-planned hoarding and no one knows that better than the professional organizers. Because someone like Kristin goes into your house and they don't try to organize your home. They don't try to have the ordinal system of boxes and bins and shelves and racks and bottles and plastic containers in order to organize the clutter. You don't want to organize the clutter. You want to get the clutter out of the way and what is left behind is something that is much more manageable. And maybe even organization then is the default when you don't own a bunch of excess. So it could be that Becky's in a place now where she owns excess clothing and that is contributing to this problem.

• 7:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  However, it could be, like in my case, I have clothes that sometimes I wear and I don't need to wash them right away. When I was at Kristin's house, she had a different solution for that. She has a rack on the wall behind her door in the bedroom where they keep their half-dirty clothes or their clothes that aren't ready to be washed just yet, but they, she wants to wear them again, but she also doesn't want to put them back in the closet in a way that may cross-contaminate the clothes that are there. Now, part of that, I think, is a preference. For me, my preference is a little bit different. I have a couple pairs of shorts that I wear almost every day. I get up in the morning, I put the pair of shorts on and I might wear it for an hour or two in the morning.

• 8:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Unless I'm doing some sort of heavy sweating in those shorts, I just put them right back in the drawer on top of the clean pair of shorts. I know whichever pair is on top, I can wear again. Now, if it gets to a point where I'm like, oh, I got a stain on it or it gets dirty or I was sweating in that, then of course, that decision's easy. I put it in the hamper because it needs to be washed. There are other clothes that you can't wash. You know, if you have dry-clean-only wool sweaters in your closet, you know you can't just put them in the hamper and then wash them in the normal cycle like I can, this cotton t-shirt that I'm... Wearing right now. And so how do I handle that? I handle it the same way. If it needs to be dry cleaned, then I take it to the dry cleaners. And if it doesn't, I put it back on the hanger.

• 8:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I put it back in the drawer because it is clean enough for me. And so I don't make the distinction of of brand new pristine clean and then dirty. And then there's some sort of middle ground here. It's either clean or it isn't clean. Just because I wore it once doesn't mean that it is not clean. And for someone else, they might say, well, every time I wear something, I have to put it in the hamper. And that's a boundary you can set up for yourself. That is not a boundary I have. I'm thinking back back to when Nicodemus and I would go on tour. And I wouldn't pack very much, but I would test my limits even with that. And there was one time when we were on tour, I wore the same T shirt for 17 days in a row.

• 9:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And we probably had 14 or 12 tour stops within those seven days. And guess what? No one noticed at all. They didn't say, oh, my gosh, what are you smelling weird? Now, of course, if Nicodemus did that, he sweats a lot. And he just operates much more hotly than than I would. He couldn't pull that off. And so understanding your own sort of physical limitations around that, I think, is really helpful. By the time I got to day 17, which is this is not something I would do on a normal, everyday basis. I wanted to test my boundaries. I wanted to maybe expand the bounds a bit. I also wanted to make myself a little bit uncomfortable because like Becky and like a lot of people listening to this.

• 10:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  As soon as I wear something once, I've been acculturated that I should wash it now. Right? But that can also be a problem. What if the thing is clean and I just wore it for an hour? And and now I feel compelled that I must wash it. Well, I was just telling myself that I don't have to do it. I don't have to follow that recipe. And so I can wear a shirt two days in a row if I want to. Or I can wear the shirt that I'm wearing today. And if it doesn't stink or if it doesn't have a stain on it, if it's not misshapen or super wrinkled. Or that's something else I can do as well. I was just ironing this shirt yesterday, even though it hadn't been washed yet. And so I've got this cotton shirt. I break out the ironing board. And and to me, ironing is sort of this meditative practice anyway. I enjoy doing that.

• 11:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  On the road several times, I've brought an iron on the road with us when we have a long tour. And the reason I do that is I've ruined several shirts with hotel irons. I don't know what people put in these irons, if they're just dumping Kool-Aid into the water spout. But I've had so many shirts ruined by other people's irons. So for a while I brought mine. I don't do that anymore because we're often flying to different places and I don't want to fly with an iron. But that is another way, a steamer, an iron. If I don't want to go through the full process of washing these clothes, is there an in-between step? What say you?

• 11:38Speaker 03

  I think what you said particularly about how there was a shirt where you wore, what was it, 17 days in a row?

• 11:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  And how Nicodemus wouldn't be able to do that. I think that anecdote provides some insight into maybe Becky's solution. It's stepping out of the paradigm of there being a set amount of times for when you should wear a thing before you wash it. Because the crux of her question, the part that makes it complicated, is she said, I don't want to place the things that have been worn, but not yet ready to wash, with the things that haven't been worn at all, because I may need to wash them sooner. And the real question is, how do you know that? So let's say I have two shirts, a black one and a white one. And I wear the white shirt, but I know that it's not dirty enough for me to wash it.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  And I'm afraid to put it in the drawer with the black shirt because I may need to wash it sooner. But I may not need to wash it sooner. If I wear the black shirt next and I wear that for two days in a row, it may turn out to be the case that I'll need to wash them at the same time, or I need to wash the black one sooner. So what if we shifted our washing cycle from how we feel when we remove our clothes from the body? We shift it from, you know, I wash everything on Tuesdays, or I wash it after this number of wears. But you shift it to, how do I feel when I take it off my body? When you remove the clothes from your body, you usually know if the right place to put that is in the laundry bin, or in a drawer, or in a closet. And you just know. You know how it feels, you know how the clothing feels, you know how much maybe you perspired that day,

• 13:15Speaker 03

  or what you ate, or anything along those lines. And I think if you do that and say, hey, look. Everything goes in the drawer where things are fresh enough to wear again. Because if it's fresh enough to touch my body, it's fresh enough to touch something else that's gonna touch my body. So, everything goes in the drawer or in the closet where it's fresh enough to wear. And I don't make any decisions about when I'm cleaning that thing until I discern how it feels viscerally when I take it from my body.

• 13:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that is spot on. And so, when I think about the way that Ryan wears his clothes versus the way that I wear my clothes, we're actually wearing the same, very similar outfit, not the same exact clothes, but we're wearing black shirts or black pants and we're going on tour. And he may need to wash his shirts more frequently. I really wish there was a correct answer to this. I wish there was a one-size-fits-all answer, but just like your clothes, your clothes aren't one-size-fits-all either. And what TK's talking about here is what boundaries are you setting up that keeps the clutter out? Because that's what a minimalist boundary is. A minimalist boundary is anything that keeps the clutter out. And if you just have dirty clothes, you're piling into your clean clothes drawers or

• 14:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  hangers, then that is clutter because it's getting in the way of those clothes that are clean. But the opposite of that might also be true. If I have clean clothes that I'm throwing in the hamper out of some sense of guilty obligation, well, that's a different kind of clutter. It's a mental clutter, it's an emotional clutter, it's the clutter of the story that we tell ourselves about, "I must wash this every 24 hours or after one wear." Because we also know that if you had a clean shirt and you accidentally dropped it in the mud, and I said, "Well, I didn't wear it yet, so I'm still gonna wear it." No, you would still wash it, even though it's never been worn. And so, just because you wore something doesn't mean that it must be washed right away. I'm eager to hear what our listeners have to say about this.

• 15:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If they have any insights for Becky, how do you handle all of these half-dirty clothes? Feel free to send us a voice memo, [email protected]. And since we're talking about boundaries today, Becky, I'd encourage you to download The Minimalist Rulebook. It's 16 rules for living with less. It is free. It's on our website over at theminimists.com. You can just... Click resources there at the top and it's one of our free resources and it will help you establish those boundaries. We call them 16 rules, but they're really 16 boundaries for living intentionally. 16 boundaries that work for your clutter. Now, before we get back to our caller Savvy D, it is time for the lightning round where

• 15:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we answer the Patreon community chats question of the week. This is where we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including all of our minimal maxims for that week for free if you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimalists.com. We'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. The question of the week this week is, what do you do with your half dirty clothes? What do you do with your half dirty clothes?

• 16:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now TK, before we get to our pithy answers, let's see what some of our listeners had to say. Leslie said, "I usually hang them on my clothesline to freshen if I don't wear them long enough for them to be dirty. I have a very small laundry basket that I use to carry out to the line. So if it's raining or snowing, the clothes might sit in the basket for a day. Once they are refreshed, I'm either wearing them again or they go back in the drawer." Let's think about this. Several people have mentioned this TK, or something similar to this, that they might hang it up on a clothesline, or they have a whole space dedicated in their home. Maybe they have a chair, or they have a bed, and that can also be a

• 17:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  problem, right? It makes me curious, is this method even possible in the 400 square foot home that you live in?

• 17:22Speaker 03

  It totally would be possible. We just don't happen to have a lot of clothes. You know, yeah, that's just not really a... A pain point for us, and I'm still trying to get rid of the few that we do have.

• 17:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He's not wearing a shirt right now, by the way.

• 17:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You look good, TK. Sarah said, "I have a washing, ironing, and folding addiction. It's relaxing." I don't know if I would call mine an addiction, maybe it is, but it is relaxing for me. And I know that often it can feel like a chore to many people because I have to do it. But also, I get to do it. What a, what an amazing privilege to have these clean clothes. And by the way, when I say I washed my clothes, I didn't really wash my clothes. I put them in this machine that washed them for me. And then many of the clothes I hang up, or I will put them in the dryer. And either way, I'm not drying the clothes. Either the sun is drying them, or the air is drying them, or the dryer itself is drying those clothes.

• 18:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sarah went back to say, "I shower twice a day and only wear fresh, clean clothes. Half-dirty clothes don't stand a chance with me." Now, my first, the judgmental self in my head was like, "You shower twice a day? That, isn't that overkill?" But I'm like, "Wait, there are so many days that I shower twice a day." Because I shower in the mornings typically, but I often swim in the afternoons. And after I swim, I shower then as well. What do you think is behind that judgment where I'm like, "Oh, that's so much. Why would you shower twice a day?" Even though I look in the mirror and realize, "Hey, I also shower twice a day many days."

• 18:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's just a natural tension that we feel when we encounter something that's so different from how we would think about it. And it takes a pause to sit with that tension and find a point of connection where you say, "Oh, okay, here's a vantage point from which I could look at it that makes it more understandable."

• 19:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, Sarah, I definitely identify with you. I enjoy ironing too, but I also understand where Jess is coming from. Jess says, "Truthfully, I bought an old chair from a friend specifically for my half-dirty clothes and anything that I don't want to end up on my kitchen island desk or other flat surface that likes to collect misfit items. It has worked pretty well for me, but lately, I've embraced putting my half-dirty clothes back in with my clean clothes." My thinking is this, if I'm willing to wear them again before I wash them, then I want them hung up and organized with all my other clothes. Now, this is exactly what I do.

• 19:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because if it's still clean enough to wear, then I consider it to be clean. I don't have some sort of phobia where I'm, I'm gonna make, contaminate all of my clean clothes with these, these half dirty clothes. Now TK, several people expressed their frustration with hanging clothes on chairs or, or furniture, even exercise bikes. Savvy D was saying that the comments on this one, the Patreon community chat, were sort of just all over the place. People were like, I don't, I don't believe in this. I don't, I, I, I don't, I don't have half dirty clothes. And, and I, maybe I kind of agree with that. I don't have half dirty clothes either. I look at them as clean or clean enough. Or I look at them as needing to be washed if they are dirty

• 20:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  or misshapen or something is going on there where I know I want to wash it. Why do we allow ourselves to use things like exercise bikes though? To, to be used as, as these sort of expensive and cumbersome clothing hangers? Especially, we know it feels chaotic and even frustrating. So many people expressed frustration in the chat like, "Yeah, you know, I've got that Peloton and it costs me so much money and it is the most expensive clothing hanger that I've ever had."

• 21:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I, I think it's a similar reason for why we do lots of things, even things that have nothing to do with clothes, that bring us frustration. And it's because we're often doing the best that we know how, given our conditioning and our familiar habits. And sometimes it just takes the willingness to step back and be present to the tension for a while in order to be intentional. You know, like at the heart of intentional is tension, right? You gotta be willing to sit with that tension. And sometimes we run from it and we settle for the comfort of, "Ah, I don't feel like finding a better place for this. I don't feel like thinking about what I can get rid of. Best to just throw it on the bike." But we end up paying for it on the back end. You may not feel like dealing with it now, but then you just have to deal with it later.

• 21:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That unintentional living in the moment is so much easier, right? We often conflate simplicity with easiness. It's doing the simple thing must be the easy thing. No, simplicity can be incredibly difficult because it requires the intention to question. Like, of course, it's not a problem. If I had a one-off sort of sheet that was really wet and for some reason I couldn't dry it because the dryer was broken and I had a Peloton bike at home and hanging the sheet on that as a one-off occasion can totally make sense. I don't want to go out and purchase a separate rack for a one-time thing. And yet, one-time occurrence, right? And yet, if it's a regular occurrence, what happens?

• 22:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, all of a sudden, my bike, or my counter, or my credenza, or my sideboard, or my couch, or my coffee table, or my chairs, they all become these repositories for laundry. And that happens when we're unintentional. If you see socks strewn throughout my house at night, you wouldn't because we have something we call Setting the Stage Rule. We did a video about this on Instagram recently where I'm in my living room and I've got all my daughter's toys around there and I've got shoes on the floor. And each night, we just spend 15 minutes. And it takes me about five now, but we started out just setting aside 15 minutes. We even would set a timer in our house and just clear up everything at night so we have a fresh morning.

• 23:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And that way, we don't have a half-dirty house in the morning either. So how about you, listeners? What do you do with your half-dirty clothes? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which, by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to the Minimalist Private Podcast. Obviously, we'd love for you to support our private podcast and get access to pages two and three, but even if you just want to interact with our community chat over there, we have thousands of people who interact in the Patreon community chat. Or you can send a voice memo to [email protected]. Let us know how you handle your half-dirty clothes. Or maybe there's a way to think about this. Maybe they're not half-dirty clothes, TK. Maybe, maybe the glass is half-full. Maybe these are half-clean clothes. And so the way I think about dirty has that that connotation, right?

• 24:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When you say something's dirty, you're like, well, I mean, it depends. Like even if I'm saying my wife is so dirty, like that is like, there's a connotation that that is positive. But generally, when we say clothes, dirty clothes, we're saying that's a bad thing. Or it's an undesirable thing, or it's an unpleasant thing. And so what if I'm saying my clothes are half dirty? I'm saying my clothes are are half bad. But if I say my clothes are half clean, I'm saying, oh, yeah, these are clean. I'm just looking at it through a different lens.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love it.

• 24:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, well, give me something pithy, TK. What do you do with your half dirty clothes?

• 24:40Speaker 03

  Half kept things reflect a life half lived. Here's why I don't like thinking about my clothes as half dirty. Either I'm gonna wear that pair of jeans or I'm not. Either I'm gonna wear that sweater or I'm not. If I'm gonna wear it, I'm not gonna wear it halfway. I can't halfway wear the hat, halfway wear the jeans, halfway wear the shirt. I'm gonna fully wear it. And if I wear it, I'm gonna wear it in a way that's all in and fully embracing of the experience that I'm in. I think there can be a certain measure of detriment to thinking about things in terms of like, half dirty, half clean. Think about it when you buy a computer or you buy a car. You know, it might be used, it might be new.

• 25:22Speaker 03

  All that matters to you is what is the best combination of what you want? When you entered the store, when you got online to place that order, what do you need in a computer? I don't care if the computer is used or new. I care if it's fully useful for the reasons why I'm purchasing it. I don't care if the car is new or used. I care if it's fully useful relative to the reasons for which I purchased it. And so I think that puts you in a different kind of mentality. I don't want to half ass anything in life. I want to fully live. So my clothes are fully wearable or they're in the laundry bin. That's it.

• 25:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and there isn't an in-between for you. And if there is an in-between for someone else, it just, what you're saying is, I still want to wear that, but maybe I don't want to co-mingle it. When it becomes clutter is whenever it gets in the way. In fact, that's my pithy answer. If it gets in the way, it's clutter. And so if you're asking a question about this, you're dealing with some sort of clutter. Or if you're bothered by the clothes that you're keeping on your bed or a chair. Sean and, Professor Sean's here on the couch today, and also post-production Peter, both were telling me about this video. And what was it? You mentioned it too, Savvy. I don't know if you saw it as well, but like, this woman bought a chair. Let's put a link to this in the show notes, because it was really fascinating. I think it was on YouTube.

• 26:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it was a chair that was specifically designed to hang your half-dirty clothes. Now, I'm not encouraging you to go out and buy a chair, but it is a functional chair that you can still sit on. It has like a sort of rack that spins around, and you can hang some of those clothes. But even that becomes a boundary. For me, I don't want that, because I don't want a bunch of clothes just hanging in my bedroom. And so if I look at that chair, that's a boundary, because maybe you can hang three or four or 10 things on it, but you can't go beyond that boundary unless you buy more chairs. And so that's not something I would encourage anyone to do. But if it is getting in the way, then it is clutter. I want to talk for a second about the half-dirty thing versus half-clean thing.

• 27:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm thinking back to our friend Matt Diavella, who directed both of our Netflix films, Minimalism and Less Is Now. He made a YouTube video about how he never washes his denim. He doesn't wash his jeans ever. And that is my philosophy with jeans as well. Unless I have the most compelling reason to wash jeans, they can be worn in perpetuity without being washed. In fact, high-end denim, that doesn't mean expensive necessarily, but intentional high-end denim...

• 27:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Is meant to not be washed regularly. In fact, the artists, the people who make these high-end clothes, they would tell you that the denim is meant to be worn in and broken in. And washing it can often, it can ruin all of the patina that you've put into wearing that denim. So it is possible to wear jeans every day. I know I did this whenever we were on tour and we did that crazy year-long tour. I just wore the same pair of pants every single day. And even if I spilled a little bit of coffee on them or dropped some, I would, I would spot treat those, those areas. But I never had to run them through the wash every single day.

• 28:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it actually built some character on those, those jeans. Now, not all clothes are that way, but clothes are contextual as well. You wouldn't go put on a three-piece suit to go do some sub-pump work in my crawl space. Well, why is that? Well, because that clean suit is going to get dirty immediately. And maybe it'll be irreparable. It's going to get so dirty down in the crawl space. So I think context here is also important. Anything to add to that? I think you said it perfectly, man.

• 29:03Speaker 04

  Josh, I actually have a question for you.

• 29:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, go for it.

• 29:06Speaker 04

  What would you do if you were to sweat through the jeans? Because that's something that I come into a lot with skateboarding. Like I have to wash my jeans every time I skate in them.

• 29:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh yeah, interesting. Yeah. So I don't know. I guess I would have, so we talked about context here. And the context of what you're doing is you're, that is performance athletic wear for you, or your jeans. And so you're going to be sweating heavily into those jeans. I'd probably have a separate pair where I did wash them regularly or semi-regularly. Although knowing that you are going to skate, I think is, you're setting aside certain equipment. Like you have a skateboard for skating. You might also have jeans for skating as well. We've got Professor Sean here. He wanted to say something.

• 29:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just have a little tip. If you want to freshen up your jeans, but don't want to wash them, you can actually put them in the freezer.

• 30:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, that's true. I used to store my jeans in the freezer when I was living in Montana. So, um, because the, at least the, the theory behind that is if you, what makes the clothes smell weird or funny or distasteful, bacteria most, most often. And a freezer can kill a lot of that, that odorous bacteria that's causing that smell in the first place.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. Interesting. All right.

• 30:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed.

• 30:27Speaker 04

  Good tip.

• 30:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Freeze your jeans.

• 30:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right. Well, that's almost the end of page one and we'll get to a bunch more on page two and page three. We have a whole switchboard of callers to talk to, but first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. It's my birthday this month, TK, and I want a gift. Not from you. Well, if you want to. What, you want a hug? That was two episodes ago. We're past that, TK. Uh, uh, just your presence is an everyday gift. But if you're listening to this, and whether you're a patron or just a public podcast listener, I would appreciate a gift from you. We don't do this every episode. In fact, I do this once a year. And I would ask that if you go onto Spotify or Apple Podcasts,

• 31:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  even if that's not where you listen to this show, and rate and, and review our podcast. We read every single one of those, but for my birthday, I would really appreciate if you go in there. That's why we don't every episode. Make sure you like and subscribe and rate and five stars and all of this. Once a year, I don't want to bother you every time. I don't want to distract you. I don't want to become part of our everyday episode cadence. But once a year, I always ask people, would you be willing to give me a birthday gift of, of rating this podcast? Now, why do I ask for that? Because it helps us reach more people. When, when you rate this podcast positively, as more than 17,000 people have done on Apple Podcasts throughout the world, and a bunch of people are now doing it on

• 31:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Spotify as well, that's really helpful because it helps put us in front of people who may have not otherwise heard about this message of simple living, of living a meaningful life with less. And so your review really does help us reach more people with this idea of. Minimalism with simple living with intentionality. And speaking of my birthday, our next Sunday Symposium is June 29th, which is my birthday here in Los Angeles, my 44th birthday. And so if you want to join me in person for my 44th birthday, you can do so here in LA, SundaySymposium.com. As a birthday gift to you, the tickets are free. So head on over there now because they are limited as well.

• 32:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We keep these events below 200 people, so they sell out every single time. We would love to see you there in Los Angeles, June 29th, at Sunday Symposium, SundaySymposium.com to grab your free tickets today. Let's celebrate together. And here is a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 32:58Speaker 06

  Hi, my name's Eleanor and I'm a longtime Patreon subscriber. I have a tip for other minimalists that is kind of an extension of the seasonality rule, and it has helped me. When looking at seasonal items such as clothing or holiday decor, I found it's great to look at them off-season. I try to do a clean out when I'm putting items away, based on what I just used, but I've found that looking at them away from the time when I'm not using them has been extremely helpful as it takes the immediacy out of the situation and I can truly see which are the hell yes items. Once the season has started, it's easy to get caught up in the excitement of, "Oh, I can't wait to wear my summer dresses." Or during Christmas, getting caught up in everyone else's maximalist decorations

• 33:43Speaker 06

  and thinking, "Well, since I already have the stuff, I might as well put it all up." But I've found that looking at those decorations in July's heat makes it very clear what I want to spend energy on in putting back into my boxes and hanging on to, and what can very easily be let go.

• 34:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Eleanor, I love this. Thank you for that nuanced and very useful tip. I would call this spicing up the seasonality rule. See what I did there? Spicing, season, seasonality rule. By minimizing these out of season, or as she calls it, off-season clothing. I think about two things here, TK. Hell, yeah, or no. Derek Sivers, right? And so is this shirt a hell yes to wear again? Is it a hell yes to wash? You get to decide that. And if it's, "I'm kinda, I don't know," then it's a no, right? And so I do that with the things I own as well. I call it the hate that shirt rule. And so if I go to my closet, I put it on and I'm like, "Oh, I don't like the way this feels.

• 34:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm allergic to wool. Why am I wearing this wool shirt right now?" Or, "I don't like the fit on this." "Oh, do you see my muffin top there?" "I don't even have a muffin top. For some reason, these make it look like I do." "I don't like that. It looked great on the mannequin. It looked good in the store. It looked great in the Instagram ad, but I just don't like it." In fact, I kind of hate that shirt. But this takes it a step further. What she's talking about is off-season. I think you can do it beyond just your clothing. It's like, these Christmas decorations, I feel obligated during Christmas. So it's kinda like, yeah, yeah. But I know for TK, Christmas is like a hell yes. Christmas decorations, hell yes.

• 35:26Speaker 03

  Literally use them to spice up the off-season. Hang them up in July, in March, April.

• 35:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And you can do that. But if, for some reason, Eleanor gets those Christmas decorations out in July and is like, "I kinda, I kinda hate holding on to these. They're kinda, it feels like they get in the way." Well, then it is clutter. It's not a hell yes during the off-season, then it is okay to let it go.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  By the way, that's how I'm thinking about my clothes as half-dirty makes me feel. When I think about them that way... I hate them. I don't want to feel like, you ever put on like a crisp, well-ironed shirt that was new, or just a pair of fresh clothes, you feel good, right? You feel fresh. I want to feel like that all the time. And I'm gonna feel that way. And if I've got things in my closet that don't make me feel that way, then I either gotta wash them, or I've gotta replace them with something that can make me feel that way.

• 36:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's possible for quote-unquote "half-dirty" clothes to make you feel that way as well. I think about one of my favorite musicians, his name's Noah Gunderson, and he's, he's rather rock. He's like, he's like the, a new form of punk rock, even though I wouldn't call his music punk rock. But I remember once I saw him down in Orange County, at a venue down there, and he was wearing, you know, black jeans and a black shirt that had several holes in it. I could tell he'd been wearing that shirt for at least a week. He also had a black eye, like, he got into a bar fight the, the day before, or two days before that, in a different city, and maybe at the very bar that he was performing songs. And there was something about that where it's like, I didn't look at his clothes as half-dirty.

• 37:04Speaker 03

  Yes, right.

• 37:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I looked, I looked at it as almost an extension of himself. In fact, we're gonna be talking that, about that, coming up on page two, about what role does our attire play in shaping our personality. And I think Noah Gunderson is a, a perfect description of that, because the way that he looked would be incongruous if he showed up with ironed khaki pants and a, a iron tucked-in polo shirt and a, a navy blazer. It just wouldn't fit. The music would still be just as beautiful for me, but the, the packaging sort, sort of would not fit what I was experiencing there. And so, I think there is something to that. We'll get back to that. But anyone else who has a, a listener tip or insight about this episode, send us a voice memo, [email protected]. We would love to

• 37:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick dirty clothes break. We'll be right back.

• 38:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that's the first 31% of episode 494. We're just gonna get dirtier from here, TK. You should see, I'm a total mess right now. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition of this episode, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, "How can I explain to my mom that I don't want to have kids without disappointing her?" "How can I get an education that leads to more income if I have a distaste for the traditional school system?" We also have a question about regret and remorse and clinging to that regret. Does it serve us at all? And I think we had a pretty nuanced answer about that. And several other Simple Living segments over there on the Minimalist Private Podcast, and several more questions as well. We'll see you over there. That is

• 38:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Professor Sean on the couch, and Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Keep it simple.