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I’ve been trying to reduce my wardrobe to just the essentials, but I keep getting stuck on my collection of plain t-shirts. I own nearly twenty of them in various neutral colors, and while I tell myself they’re all useful, I probably only reach for the same five or six. How do you decide when nearly identical items are truly redundant versus when they serve a distinct purpose?

I did a little teardown of the wardrobe last season. I pulled all twenty tees, laid them out by color and fit, and stuck tiny notes on the ones I wore most. I wore only those for two weeks and tracked what I liked about them—soft cotton, not too tight around the shoulders, and a neckline that didn’t require constant adjustment. The others got a sell-by date pass, mostly because they felt off after a day or two or the fabric started pilling. In the end I kept the core five or six that checked those boxes and I pared everything else down to a small test pile. It wasn’t perfect, but it made the decision tangible and I stopped pretending every color variation was essential.

I did the numbers in my head for ages, but the truth came out after a month: I kept reaching for two or three tees and the rest stayed in the drawer. The difference wasn’t color so much as the fit and how the fabric felt after a day or two. A longer sleeve sometimes feels different, a tighter shoulder kills the vibe.

I wonder if the real issue isn’t counting pieces but counting wear occasions. Do you actually have a go-to combination built around a single tee?

I once tried keeping three identical tees in a single drawer and rotating them like a uniform, thinking it would solve everything. The problem was the laundry schedule and the way I felt in them after a day. After a week I loosened the constraint, kept a couple extra for layering, but still pared down to a small stable set. The key, for me, was not to chase perfect sameness but to be honest about what actually gets worn.

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