I recently went through my wardrobe and inverted all of my stacks of clothes. I realized I have a tendency to wear whatever is on top and neglect to wear things for months at a time that are buried below. Then it occurred to me, maybe it doesn't matter.
Consider: a newly purchased shirt can be worn X number of times before it becomes unwearable. Does it really make a difference if those times are clustered together tightly or spread out?
My original thinking was that if I have several pairs of shoes & wear them in rotation, they will last longer. That might be true because the uses will be spread apart, but if I really kept to the rotation system, wouldn't all of my shoes be ready for replacement at roughly the same time, another problem in its own right?
There is also the social aspect to be considered. It seems that it is socially unacceptable in most circles to wear 1 shirt every day of the week and more socially acceptable to cycle through 7 or so. Maybe even more than 7 is "optimally" socially acceptable.
What strategy is better, clustering uses together by wearing your favorite items frequently or cycling through your wardrobe? How many different articles of clothing should one have to cycle through in terms of social acceptability? Do we have any practicing Minimalists here and how do they deal with the social aspect of this?
You could probably do an analysis looking at the expected utility in terms of social benefits (people seeing you as well-dressed or fashionable), or performance of the clothing (sports clothing, jeans, work boots), depending on what you wear and do.
In terms of clothing minimalism, it probably depends on your friends and work environment. Many people seem to have multiple similar-looking work outfits, so that they don't have to worry too much about changing their appearance regularly, and others have room to imagine any number of identical items of clothing...
If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post, even in Discussion, it goes here.