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When I start dating someone, I want to wear my best shirt (or one of my favorites) on each date. The problem is that that could lead to me wearing the same outfit each time.

Is there a low effort way to keep track of which shirt I wore previously and not have an accidental repeat?

My ideas so far: associate a picture in my memory that ties the previous date to the shirt. Or I can plan the next shirt, which will work better but I would have to set it aside and not wear it on other days.

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    You could always just wear the same outfit and let your date obsess over trying to figure out if you just did a wash, only wear one outfit or have a closet full of the same clothes.
    – pboss3010
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 12:30
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    @pboss3010 Sounds like that'd make a good TV show...
    – Michael McGriff
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 17:40
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    This may be an example of the XY Problem familiar to programmers. The life hack may be realizing that if you don't remember what you wore before, your date probably won't, either. Do you remember what they wore?
    – StackOverthrow
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 0:11
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    piojo : Comment #1: So you wore a shirt. And the result was that the relationship wasn't completely trashed, and further dates are intended. It sounds like that choice of a shirt didn't work out too badly, and yet you are seeing this as a top priority to make sure you change? Comment #2: As @TKK's excellent comment mentioned, she might not notice. Perhaps especially if you re-wear something that is acceptable to re-wear (a jacket, maybe a sweatshirt) and if undershirts are relatively non-descript/unmemorable.
    – TOOGAM
    Commented Feb 9, 2019 at 19:10
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    "This question is about how to not wear the same shirt multiple dates in a row. If she doesn't care about that, she has a low bar." - Or maybe she's just not obsessed with clothing. Not everyone is, you know.
    – marcelm
    Commented Feb 9, 2019 at 22:23

7 Answers 7

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My advice will be so obvious - just take a photo before\on the date. I think, if you'll take a photo with your girlfriend, she 'll be happy ;D

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    Tagging the photo with the day of the month will help with this too. You could do this by holding a piece of paper with today's date when you're having your picture taken ... and obviously you should do this at home!
    – BrettFromLA
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 14:52
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    That is an excellent suggestion, though it's not a given that a girl will want to take photos with me. It might imply commitment, and that will freak some people out.
    – piojo
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 15:23
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    Taking a quick selfie is also an option, if you don't want to get her in the picture! Quick, easy, and the metadata on the photo should easily tell you when the shirt was worn.
    – Cooper
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 16:14
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    @BrettFromLA, Unless you're keeping around a polaroid for the pictures, digital cameras (including phones) will save the file with a date and time already. Heck most phones include the location of the picture as well.
    – JPhi1618
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 19:22
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    @BrettFromLA Android, and I'd assume iOS, sort the pictures by date automatically. There may not be anything on the picture itself, but it will be under a header that tells you what date it was taken.
    – FreeMan
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 15:21
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When you launder your clothing, put your fresh shirts on one side of the wardrobe rail (or the portion of the rail that takes your "date" shirts") and take your "to wear" shirts off the other side of the rail.

This ensures that you're cycling through your shirts and giving them an even chance of impressing your date without needing to document the experience with photographs.

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  • I do this myself.
    – Phil N DeBlanc
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 11:17
  • This assumes the next date will be before you do laundry again.
    – TIO Begs
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 13:38
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    @TIOBegs No, I think the idea is that you wear things from one end of the rail, and put freshly-laundered things on the other end, meaning that you wear each of them in turn before repeating. Which means that this answer assumes that you have enough shirts that you don't cycle through all of them before your next date, or else that you have a subset of shirts that you only wear on dates.
    – anaximander
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 14:36
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    And washing will mix up the order enough that you don't have a repetitive "this then this then this" pattern.
    – wizzwizz4
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 20:59
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    I'm not sure if I understand. This is just cycling the shirts so none are neglected, right? Unless I'm mistaken, this either: (1) assumes you take the shirts in order, and don't prefer the favorites, or (2) assumes the number of shirts matches the interval of dates, so the previous shirt is always on the wrong side when it's time for the next date.
    – piojo
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 3:02
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Have more than one "best shirt". Even more than you have now. Then the likelihood of wearing the same shirt decreases. If you do happen to wear the same shirt and your date notices, just say you have a lot of shirts and don't remember which ones you wear, because that will be the truth.

If your date notices and seems to care, you will then know that they're probably not worth dating in the first place, which is the best possible result for you in that case.

Mainly, don't worry about it so much. Work on you, not what you wear.

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    I agree with that, and have done it to some extent. I have five or so "best shirts", but the choice depends on the weather and the day as well as laundry status, which reduces the count significantly. No date has ever complained, though a girl did buy me a t-shirt once!
    – piojo
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 2:59
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Get a little black book and keep some notes in it.

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    Short and to the point. I remember writing down other notes too - things to help me remember important points like "birthday is in may", "deathly afraid of axlotls", "has an identical twin who likes to play pranks on dates".
    – Criggie
    Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 6:22
  • Doesn't have to be that color... But I do like the idea of keeping a journal of what you wear when if it is important to you :)
    – L.B.
    Commented Feb 15, 2019 at 15:03
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I mark my shirts by using slightly different hangers. I have a handful of hangers that came from my dry cleaners. They look just like my normal hangers, but there's a little paper flag at the top with a number on it (shows how many shirts were in that bundle). If I need to remember not to wear a particular shirt again, I'll hang it on one of the hangers with the little flag. They're easily visible when browsing the closet.

If you don't use a dry cleaners often, you can make your own flags by taking a two-inch-long piece of masking tape, centering it on the hanger (running perpendicular to it), and doubling it over on itself. You can even write on the tape for clarity, so you'll remember (for instance) whether a shirt was sidelined from the next date or from the next job interview.

A colleague of mine used to put a paperclip on the collar, but I don't recommend that for most shirts. It tends to leave a stretched/wrinkled spot if it stays there for too long.

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  • That makes sense. So one shirt only would be removed from free rotation. It sounds easy: when I remove the shirt from the "date" hanger, I would replace it with another, for the next date. So I couldn't wear one twice in a row. This idea doesn't scale well for casual dating with multiple people, though. (You can't use the same shirt in multiple "next date shirt" slots.) In that case, the photo solution would have to be used.
    – piojo
    Commented Feb 9, 2019 at 8:33
  • It's more the other way around. Instead of marking "wear this one next", you're marking "don't wear this one yet". If you make your own flags with tape, you can mark the tape with different colored pens to indicate multiple "do not wear" reasons. As long as you remember where specifically you shouldn't wear that shirt again, you don't have to remove it from your regular clothing pool.
    – bta
    Commented Feb 11, 2019 at 17:00
  • I like that, but I would need to augment the system to handle laundry. For example, using a sticky note instead of the tape and writing the shirt's color, so the sticky note can be added to the shirt/hanger after laundry.
    – piojo
    Commented Feb 12, 2019 at 3:32
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poppy's answer is the easiest one to follow and according to our current life-style, it's more likely to work than what I am going to suggest now.

One way to do it is to first arrange your closet, hang all your shirts in the same way.. For example the hanger "pointing" to the inside of the closet.

As long as you have shirts with hanger "pointing" to the inside, use them.

After laundry, hang your shirts with the hanger "pointing" to the outside.

This way you even have a way to pass by all your clothes before starting wearing the same shirts again.

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  • Although I think this is a good idea to go through all your clothes in an uniform way, I don't think this solves the problem in this case. If the dates are, let's say, one week apart, the person may have used all the "inside-pointing" shirts and wash them, so their last date shirt may be between the options again.
    – Javier
    Commented Feb 7, 2019 at 17:26
  • @Javier I do agree with you. Maybe it works better if you have a set of clothes that you only use them for special days, therefor you can go through them all. I know that I do.
    – Paul Karam
    Commented Feb 8, 2019 at 7:13
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Well for remembering just take a click on date and set it as wallpaper in your phone .Although it may impress your date and for another date you know what you have to wear :)

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