Find what is best for you, and buy a lot of them. Then you can ignore this topic for a long time.
I have tried this with pants, because I have trouble finding comfortable ones. Unfortunately by the time I have a pair of pants that I’m sure are comfortable and I’m ready to buy five more of them, nobody stocks the same model anymore.
A mail order catalog that doesn’t change much might help with this, if you can find one that has the sort of clothes you like. Both LL Bean and Land’s End usually carry the exact same thing or close to it for several years. I don’t have much experience with others besides those two, though.
In this case, they might be found inexpensively on Ebay.
I know exactly what shoes I like to wear to work, and I buy a couple pairs on Ebay whenever one of the colors (brown, blue, black) wears out. It’s up to you, if you’re willing to wear used shoes (you can also buy them new) but the pair I’m wearing look brand new and cost 1/20th the department store price.
I also buy identical pairs of socks in bulk. When they did stop selling the brand I liked, I got rid of all the old type knowing how much trouble it is to match different brands of the same colored socks.
I am lucky to have many pairs of identical socks which have their sizes written on the bottom side. Nobody sees the bottom sides of my socks, but it is so easy to look there when sorting them. So they don’t get mixed with the older socks of the same color.
If in the future I don’t have the same luck, maybe I could just make some marks on the bottom sides. For example one small colored dot, using a washing-resistant color. The most work would be finding that color. But marking the already sorted socks, that would be a question of a few seconds.
That’s an excellent alternative to throwing out perfectly good socks. This is something I can immediately apply to the socks of my children, since the issue there is that they’re necessarily white-but-different-sizes (and it’s difficult for me to tell just by looking at them whether they’re ‘little’ or ‘medium-little’.)
Pay attention to what qualities work well for you.
Next time you buy pants… consider yourself entering a “trial period” of, say, one month. Wear them a lot during that month.
At the end of the month: if they fit all the good qualities. and have no bad qualities… go buy another pair—you have now entered the second phase… which lasts, say, 3 months (time can be varied as you get more skilled at this).
At the end of the three months… if you’ve decided these pants are really awesome and comfy… you should still be within the same season in which the pants first came out—and can go buy another five pairs (or whatever makes you happy).
The idea being: after a month, if you put in a concerted effort to pay attention—you can probably tell whether a pair of pants will be perfect for you.… but if you’re unsure—then buying just one extra means you have at least got two pairs of really good ones, but haven’t spent too much extra if you suddenly find out that they fall apart on the dot at 2.5 months old. By the time you hit the longer period—you’ll have worn them for a season and should have a very good idea of whether they fit really well (=1 to buying more), and whether they are wearing out unusually fast (-1 instead).
I have tried this with pants, because I have trouble finding comfortable ones. Unfortunately by the time I have a pair of pants that I’m sure are comfortable and I’m ready to buy five more of them, nobody stocks the same model anymore.
A mail order catalog that doesn’t change much might help with this, if you can find one that has the sort of clothes you like. Both LL Bean and Land’s End usually carry the exact same thing or close to it for several years. I don’t have much experience with others besides those two, though.
In this case, they might be found inexpensively on Ebay.
I know exactly what shoes I like to wear to work, and I buy a couple pairs on Ebay whenever one of the colors (brown, blue, black) wears out. It’s up to you, if you’re willing to wear used shoes (you can also buy them new) but the pair I’m wearing look brand new and cost 1/20th the department store price.
I also buy identical pairs of socks in bulk. When they did stop selling the brand I liked, I got rid of all the old type knowing how much trouble it is to match different brands of the same colored socks.
I am lucky to have many pairs of identical socks which have their sizes written on the bottom side. Nobody sees the bottom sides of my socks, but it is so easy to look there when sorting them. So they don’t get mixed with the older socks of the same color.
If in the future I don’t have the same luck, maybe I could just make some marks on the bottom sides. For example one small colored dot, using a washing-resistant color. The most work would be finding that color. But marking the already sorted socks, that would be a question of a few seconds.
That’s an excellent alternative to throwing out perfectly good socks. This is something I can immediately apply to the socks of my children, since the issue there is that they’re necessarily white-but-different-sizes (and it’s difficult for me to tell just by looking at them whether they’re ‘little’ or ‘medium-little’.)
Pay attention to what qualities work well for you. Next time you buy pants… consider yourself entering a “trial period” of, say, one month. Wear them a lot during that month.
At the end of the month: if they fit all the good qualities. and have no bad qualities… go buy another pair—you have now entered the second phase… which lasts, say, 3 months (time can be varied as you get more skilled at this).
At the end of the three months… if you’ve decided these pants are really awesome and comfy… you should still be within the same season in which the pants first came out—and can go buy another five pairs (or whatever makes you happy).
The idea being: after a month, if you put in a concerted effort to pay attention—you can probably tell whether a pair of pants will be perfect for you.… but if you’re unsure—then buying just one extra means you have at least got two pairs of really good ones, but haven’t spent too much extra if you suddenly find out that they fall apart on the dot at 2.5 months old. By the time you hit the longer period—you’ll have worn them for a season and should have a very good idea of whether they fit really well (=1 to buying more), and whether they are wearing out unusually fast (-1 instead).